


Is There Somebody Who Can Watch You?

by plaguedbynargles



Category: Shades of Magic - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Occult, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Victorian, also i might uh include a cameo from a literary figure, not a lot I promise, post-A Conjuring of Light, references to slavery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2019-07-18 22:16:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 37,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16127852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plaguedbynargles/pseuds/plaguedbynargles
Summary: An alternate ending for Holland Vosjik, the man who deserved more. Kell runs after him, rather than leaving him to die in White London, and entrusts him to the care of an old friend: Edward Archibald Tuttle.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sooooooooooo literally no one asked for this but I'm stressing over query letters and internships and I don't want to get too rusty with my writing and I don't want to start a formal new project just yet so y'all get this. Prepare to love Edward Archibald Tuttle more than you ever thought you would and cry over Holland Vosjik more than you have since A Conjuring of Light.
> 
> That is, if anyone even reads this. I don't know how many chapters this will be but I do know that a certain literary figure will be cameo-ing so look forward to that.

               The tavern was claustrophobic, and smelled of stale beer.

               Holland thought dryly, as he ducked in through the low doorway, that it wasn’t exactly the type of place that boded well for a fresh start. At this point, the idea of starting anew, the idea that he could exist as somebody ‘fresh’, was borderline comedic.

               “I don’t know where he is.”

               Kell Maresh said it without looking at him, as he scanned the tavern with a blue eye, his black one carefully hidden by thick, auburn hair. With the way that they were standing in the doorway, it might have seemed that he was making an announcement to the few dead-eyed regulars who were lost enough in life to be three pints in when the sun was this high in the sky. At least, Holland assumed from the diffused brightness outside that there was a sun behind the clouds somewhere. Truly, this London was grey, from its uneven cobblestones to the heavens above.

               People were beginning to dart suspicious glances at them, the redhead and the tall, white-haired monster behind him. Holland bristled, crossing his arms and wishing he could make himself smaller. He looked over his shoulder and, on quick, nervous impulse, closed the wooden tavern door behind him before doing a scan of the bodies in the room, the bottles on the bar.

               He had several options if things went awry, even without magic. Grab a bottle from behind the bar, smash it, and use the jagged glass as a weapon. Alternatively, steal one of the smoking cigars from between one of the drunkards’ lips, spill some liquor, and light the place up. But that was difficult to control, and Holland liked control, as little as he tended to encounter it.

               Then again, it might just be easier not to fight at all. He had wanted to claim a bit of peace in death, but he supposed after everything went dark, even if it went dark agonizingly, the peace would come.

               A fire smoldered weakly behind a grate, across the room. Its heat was nigh undetectable from where Holland and Kell stood, but Holland still found himself sweating as he shivered. He ground his teeth together to keep them from chattering, squeezing his biceps so tightly that he thought they might bruise.

               Not that Holland trusted anyone, but he didn’t trust this ‘friend’ of Kell’s.

               Without looking at Holland, Kell strode straight forward to the bar and took a seat, still appraising the room. Training his eyes on the floor, Holland followed, his stomach churning.

               Of course Kell would choose to sit with his back to the door. Now, Holland would have no choice but to follow suit. Up until the very end, Kell couldn’t summon the will to even consider lessening Holland’s pain, even in the smallest of ways.

               Not that Holland would ever expect someone to do such a thing for him. He wasn’t sure he even wanted that now. More than anything, he supposed he wanted to go somewhere where the pain would ease, where he could be alone and where no one would hurt him anymore. And the only way to ensure the pain would stop forever was dying. He had thought that the White London forest had been where he would die, but apparently Kell had to deny him even that much.

               Holland kept going back there. To the forest. To his almost death. To the sweet, sweet silence of the world and his mind alike. When he had felt what he’d thought was his last breath leaving his lungs, when Kell’s footsteps had faded away and they had said their final, stiff goodbyes, he had begun to glimpse the beginning of something he thought could be called peace.

               It was dark, and it was cold, but it was not pain, and therefore it was peace. Certainly, it was kinder than anything Holland had known in life. For just a few moments, he was his own.

               And then, Kell had come back, because apparently, Holland could not even possess himself in death. No, keeping Maresh’s conscience squeaky clean of wrongdoing was much more important than Holland’s autonomy, and it had been too greedy for Holland to ask even to die of his own volition. Kell’s footfalls as he retraced his steps through the desolate forest had cut through Holland’s peace like cannonfire, and for the first time in a long time, he had felt something other than pain.

               He’d felt anger. Nay, he’d felt _fury_. By the way that Kell had called him, you’d have thought that his name was “wait”. Only once had he been called “Holland”, as though his name was too filthy, too unmentionable to cross Kell’s lips, even as it was being saved.

               After a pitiful struggle, Holland had gone limp in Kell’s arms like a rag-doll, and Kell had dragged him back to Red-London. There, Holland had spent a pleasant week listening to people argue about what to do with him, avoiding the trays of food that were pushed halfheartedly at him by jittery servants, and alternating between drinking caffeine enough to avoid sleeping entirely and tossing back enough alcohol to slip into a black, nightmare-free slumber. Foul though it smelled, the alcohol here was tempting enough that Holland’s fingers kept finding their ways to his pockets, searching for money that wasn’t there. Pity. It would have been nice to make whatever degradation was to come a bit foggier.

               Now, Kell was pushing the burden onto someone else. Someone he called an ‘old friend’, who lived in this stinking bastardization of London, far too foul to compare to Red, but far too soft to rival White. If Holland had had any pride left, he might have dreaded the ruin that would inevitably befall him here; it was one thing to face hardship in White London, a land known for cruelty, but quite another to face it in the place he’d heard Delilah Bard call “Boring London”.

               Holland hoped Kell’s “friend” wasn’t worried about taking on any sort of long term burden. He intended to slip away the first chance he got and find a quiet corner to die in. It was a bit depressing, he supposed, that his body would feed the rats instead of the wild dogs that roamed the outskirts of White London, but then, it was also a fitting ending for someone who had been treated as nothing more than fodder his entire life. His life was something for others to consume, not for him to live. Now, there was nothing more than crumbs left, anyway.

               And perhaps it wasn’t fair, that people like Kell and Delilah and Rhysand got to live their lives as themselves, for themselves, but Holland simply didn’t care to examine that discrepancy anymore. Although, it did make him a bit curious sometimes, wondering what kind of alien life they all lived. What was it about Holland that destined him for misery? Truly, he could only conclude that there was some essence to him, some invisible defect that everyone could see except him, that pointed him out as someone who not only _could_ be hurt, but _should_ be hurt.

He chanced a glance at Kell from behind greasy hair. He hadn’t bothered bathing while he’d been at the palace—seemed a bit pointless, really, when he’d be ending it all soon, anyway.

               Holland was very aware of someone seated behind them getting up and moving to a more distant table. All he heard was the screech of wood on wood, and the creaking of the new chair accepting a hefty weight, but he could feel the disgusted glare that was shot in their direction.

               Essence indeed.

               “Would it have killed you to bathe?” Kell muttered under his breathe, covering his nose with a sleeve of his signature coat, as though he had only just smelled Holland. More than likely, it was to signal to the man across the room that it was not he, but his unseemly companion, who was producing the stench.

               If only. That would have made all of this nonsense avoidable.

               They waited in silence for several more minutes, or seconds, or hours, Holland didn’t know. What he did know was that eventually, the tavern door was thrown open with such force that even Kell jumped, and in walked a gangly man in a too-small jacket, huffing and puffing like he was running for his life, his face as red as the blood Kell magicked.

               Maresh’s eyes lit up in recognition, and he twisted his torso to get a better look at the fellow, who met his gaze, and then Holland’s, in a half second.

               “Master…Kell Maresh…” he panted, closing the door and making his way across the room to them. He gave Kell’s hand a vigorous shake in greeting, and then extended his hand to Holland, who placed his palm limply in the other man’s surprisingly strong grip. “So sorry to be late, really, I’m horrified. And this is Mr. Vosjik?”

               Kell nodded. “That’s right,” he said evenly. There was a great number of people staring at them. For the first time in a while, he looked directly at Holland. “Holland, this is Edward Archibald Tuttle. He’s…well, he’s quite invested in people like us.”

               Tuttle shook Holland’s hand with an eagerness bordering on aggressive.

               “Yes, excellent, pleased to meet your acquaintance, Mister Vosjik. Just wonderful. Now, my cab awaits just outside, my home just a brief trip away. Nothing akin to luxury, but then, the ma—”

               Kell coughed violently.

               “—ah, your…work, has always come first. My work. We’ll just give you some time to get settled, draw you a nice, hot bath, and afterwards, we can discuss how lessons will proceed.”

               Holland glanced confusedly at Kell, who raised his eyebrows pointedly.

               _Oh, Sanct._

               It became painfully clear to Holland, then, that this was not charity. No, this was _ownership_. Tuttle would keep Holland from dying—whatever he deigned that to look like—and Holland, in penance, would give him magic lessons. Labor.

               Instead of suicide, Kell had given him slavery. Because that was what this was, wasn’t it? There was no agreed upon price, no escape in sight, Kell was selling him back into slavery to this stammering fool of a man and Holland was supposed to feel _grateful_. Only a man who had never been a slave, only a pampered prince who still believed that suicide was the greatest pain a man could ever know, would truly believe that to be charity.

               Irritated, Holland forced himself to nod at Tuttle. It was unclear whether he was sweating so profusely because of his arduous journey or his excitement. The latter suggested a possibility that settled in Holland’s stomach like acid: even the man who Kell was pushing him off on didn’t want him, only his magic.

               Which, of course, Holland no longer had.

               A part of him wanted to throttle Kell and demand why this foolishness was better than leaving him to die in quiet dignity in the forest. But, of course, he couldn’t do that here. Holland got a sense, from the darting glances and the judgement even the drunkards had for him and Kell that this was not the best London in which to commit faux paus.

               “Well then,” Kell addressed Holland haltingly, “this is goodbye.”

               Holland looked at the prince blankly, feeling nothing even remotely akin to sentimentality at their parting. There had been a time, once, when he’d drawn a parallel between their lives, had thought their magic connected them by an invisible thread. But now, Holland didn’t have magic anymore. And now, he knew that he and Kell were absolutely nothing alike. Kell Maresh and the rest of the world existed on a different plane from Holland. Such was the way of things. He had been through enough to know that much.

               Holland nodded at Kell, meeting his eyes for what would become the last time. Kell had explained everything before they left: this was probably the last contact they would ever have. Even if Kell visited Grey London in the future, he was not likely to seek Holland out. It was a chance to build a new life.

               It was a chance for Red London to rid itself of Holland Vosjik once and for all, without weighing on Kell’s conscience. Or, while weighing on it as little as it could, when he was abandoning Holland with a total stranger in an unfamiliar world with no possessions, no money, and no prospects. Really, it was a messier suicide than the ones Holland had been planning in his mind for years. One last ‘fuck you’ to the man without whose help Red London could not have been saved.

               Not that Holland thought he deserved any better. He didn’t. Again, there was simply something inside of him that made him destined for this sort of thing. It could not be that the entire world had treated him cruelly until this point. No one’s life was that awful unless they deserved it. It was, as he had long known, a flaw inside of him. A taint in his blood.

               Kell slid off his bar-stool, a shadow of irritation crossing his face before quickly disappearing. It occurred to Holland, too late, that he was probably expecting a ‘thank you’.

               _Well,_ thought Holland, _the prince can suffer having his expectations thwarted just this once._

He watched Tuttle shake hands enthusiastically with Kell once more, thanking him profusely, Holland assumed, for all of the magic lessons that would never exist in his future. Kell returned the thanks in earnest, and, finally, managed to free his hand from the taller man’s grip.

               With one last look of something in between scorn and pity towards Holland, Kell Maresh turned to go, slipping out of the tavern into the Grey London fog, which had gotten so thick that Holland only was able to watch his retreating back for two steps before he was completely obscured. A perfect day to disappear without a trace.

               Strangely, the room seemed smaller when Kell left. The pathetic fire across the room crackled sadly, and the man who had moved away from Holland and Kell earlier gave a belch dangerously close to a retch, before positively keeling over in his chair, crashing to the floor and spilling beer everywhere.

               No one moved to help him, though several of the other drunkards did turn a disapproving eye towards his splayed form and the dark puddle growing around it. Holland wondered, with a scoff, how many of them were telling themselves they were not at least _that bad_ yet.

               Tuttle’s face had a twinge more pity in it than that of the other patrons, but that didn’t prompt him to offer help. Instead, with the primary object of his affections gone, he turned to Holland with eyes like great, golden, stars. Holland had seen it happen a thousand times, but he wondered what they would look like when the warmth drained out of them. There was a profoundly naïve softness to them; in spite of Kell’s obvious disdain for the man, Holland thought they were actually quite similar. Clueless men whose greatest hardship in the world was being told _no._

               “Now then,” Tuttle said brightly, hopping on the balls of his feet, “shall we?”

               Holland didn’t nod, didn’t say no, didn’t question. He did what he knew how to do, and silently obeyed, slipping away into his new master’s world.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's Friday night, so you know what that means...yep, I'm updating this story and crying about my future instead of talking to the pretty girl from my class I could have hung out with! Agh!

               Holland tried to remain as still as possible, but it was difficult to do so when the cab was jostling along the cobblestones as it was. There were a few times when they hit a large enough bump that he flew out of his seat, and more than a few where the same thing happened to the much smaller Tuttle, who kept crossing and uncrossing his legs, torn between decorum and balance.

               “Dreadful, isn’t it?” he remarked for the fifth time, “I really am so terribly sorry. It won’t be long now until we reach my townhouse.”

               Holland nodded miserably, thanking his lucky stars that he hadn’t eaten anything that day, and thinking that he should be the one apologizing. Though the air was utterly frigid, it was humid, and inside the carriage it was even more sticky and close. He was certain that Tuttle could very well tell that he hadn’t bathed for a week, though he was far too polite to comment on it.

               _Polite, or unwilling to risk alienating his new magic teacher,_ Holland thought with ire.

               He felt Tuttle’s whiskey eyes on him again, and Holland would perhaps have felt ashamed of his image in that moment, if he’d had any energy left. What must Tuttle think of his filthy hair, the deep circles underneath his eyes, and his inability to return his social graces?

               It didn’t matter, of course. He was about to get a whole lot uglier, as soon as he could sneak away and find a suitable knife or tall building. Grey London would never know Holland Vosjik, therefore _shame_ didn’t work for him like it did for those at least attempting to live.

               “So how do you prefer that your students address you, then?” Edward Archibald, damn him, tried again.

               _Students._ Holland had to laugh. And he did, but the sound that escaped him was closer to the rattling of bones than the honey-smooth song that escaped Kell when he found something amusing.

               “Do I,” Holland paused for a teeth-slamming jolt of the carriage, “fit the profile of a teacher by trade?”

               Edward Tuttle paused, just as thrown by the question as by the carriage.

               “I suppose not,” he said sheepishly, turning his gaze to the window, which had fogged up to the point of opacity. “But then, it’s been some time since I’ve been in school.”

               Holland grunted.

               “May I call you by your Christian name?” Tuttle blurted so suddenly that Holland flinched. A pounding headache was forming in one of his temples.

               He flicked his gaze from Tuttle to the window. Having no clue in the slightest what a “Christian” name was, Holland conceded, “Fine.”

               “Oh, lovely, that. Forgive me if I may be so bold, but ‘Holland’ is much more enjoyable to say than ‘Vosjik’. And since we’ll be living together, I imagine the formalities of ‘mister’ will get old quickly. Some might disagree, but then, I suppose I’ve never been the first to adhere to convention. We all are a bit disconnected from one another for the sake of propriety, these days.”

               Holland sighed. His head throbbed.

               “You may, of course, call me Ned. Edward, too, if you like, but most people use Ned.”

               Holland forced himself to meet Edward’s—Ned’s—eyes, and nodded.

               A light rain began to patter on the roof of the cab, and Holland leaned his head against the wall, listening to it. The violently rocking carriage did little to help his headache, but he simply did not have the energy to remain upright anymore.

               Though his eyes were closed, Holland tracked every movement of Tuttle’s. The rustling of fabric when he crossed and uncrossed his legs and arms, the slight squeak of a finger drawn through the fog on the window. Holland was struck once more by how like a child Ned was when he opened his eyes again to find a carefully drawn moon and stars weeping condensation on the other side of the window.

               _What a useless endeavor._ More and more condensation rained down from the miniature galaxy until none of its celestial bodies were recognizable anymore.

               Tuttle himself seemed not to notice, however. In fact, he didn’t even seem to notice that Holland was awake. His eyes were trained intensely on what looked to be a handwritten letter, in a yellowing envelope addressed in a swirling, unconcerned script, each letter running away from the words it was a part of as though it had a real hope of doing anything else. A lover, most likely. The penmanship certainly had a feminine elegance to it.

               Holland took a moment to marvel at the fact that there were still lovers running around in the world at all. The proof was right in front of him, yet it was still difficult to believe. There really were people who still had heart enough to trust, who went around writing one another letters, who had never been burned.

               _Or experienced attempted murder at the hands of their lovers._

               Holland’s heart gave a violent jolt at the thought, and Ned Tuttle glanced up at him quite suddenly, his golden eyes flooded with fear.

               It took Holland a moment to realize that he had audibly gasped at the thought of Talya. Perhaps he had startled Tuttle.

               Indeed he had, but the fear in Ned’s expression quickly smoothed out and dissipated, leaving Holland to deal with no more than a look of mild questioning.

               Thinking quickly, Holland asked, with more enthusiasm than he had shown since meeting the man, “How much farther do we have to go? This rocking is giving me nightmares.”

               The question in Tuttle’s face turned to an easy, sympathetic smile. “Not much longer. I’m sure it’s a difficult place to have a nap.”

               Carefully, he folded the letter, and placed it into the inside pocket of his jacket, so that it sat underneath the lively green carnation pinned to his breast.

               Holland wasn’t sure why, but he had expected him to go on. To perhaps begin blabbering about his lover and how they had met and how precisely she liked to draw him a bath after a hard day, but he didn’t. No, Ned Tuttle made a point of rubbing away the condensation on the window so that he might look out at the world instead of into Holland’s eyes, and Holland wasn’t quite sure whether he found the following silence a relief or a disappointment.

*

               Holland’s headache was still present when he awoke what felt like a few seconds later. The cab had finally come to a merciful stop, and Ned Tuttle had one delicate hand on his shoulder, shaking him back into an unfortunate consciousness.

               “We’ve arrived, dear friend.” Tuttle’s breath fogged in the carriage as he said it; the door had already been opened by the driver, allowing the chill of winter full access to the interior.

               The driver helped Tuttle hop down onto the street with a spirited _clack._ Holland followed, but refused to take the driver’s hand, earning him what must have been his fifth death-glare thus far that day.

               It had been admittedly cold in the carriage, but outside was another thing entirely. The fog had gotten so thick that it literally felt like standing in a raincloud, a raincloud which was _just_ a smidge too warm to carry snow.

               Holland was well versed in the cruelties of cold, but stepping outside in that moment served as a reminder of how unforgiving water in the air could make winter. Pair it with wind, and the suffering doubled. He had been left exposed to the elements by the Dane twins enough times to know that full well.

               And he was going to have to do it again, to himself this time. _For_ himself. It would be easy to make a run for it now, while Tuttle was paying the driver from his little velvet pouch of coins. Far easier than slipping away once he had spent time around the bastard. Far easier than once he had been tricked into yet another relationship doomed to end in betrayal or, worse, indifference. He was already half-dead, so might as well finish the job while he still had the motivation!

               Holland wrapped his arms around himself and shivered, trying to will himself to fade into the fog.

               And then Tuttle was tucking his money away (in yet another pocket—Sanct, at this point, the man’s coat’s storage space was rivaling _Kell’s_ ), and he was turning to Holland, looking as though he couldn’t believe he was still standing there.

               It struck Holland, as the carriage was pulling away, that perhaps Ned Tuttle was not used to receiving the best of treatment from Kell Maresh. The latter was, after all, a smuggler. Holland doubted that Ned Tuttle was in any way immune to the subtle air of condescension that Kell exhibited towards nearly everyone but his brother, especially when one took into account his unapologetic enthusiasm and his hopeless endeavors to learn magic.

               After a moment of hesitation, Holland Vosjik took a step towards Ned Tuttle. Perhaps he was reading too much into it, but it looked like the other man’s shoulders depressed with relief as he turned to unlock his door. When he unlocked it, Holland followed him up the stone steps that led inside.

               The narrow room that they entered was nearly as cold as it was outdoors, but Holland certainly wasn’t complaining at the lack of wind and damp. Had he not been so thin, touching Tuttle in some shape or form while he was removing his tattered overcoat and shoes would have been impossible. Luckily, despite the fact that Tuttle was clearly well fed (not _fat_ , per se, for he was ramrod straight and thin, but merely well fed), Holland was flirting with emaciation, and he could therefore spare Tuttle that particular encumbrance.

               Holland could smell himself quite clearly in here, even moreso than in the cab. Probably, it was the temperature difference; suddenly, he was afraid of what would happen when they walked inside.

               “Yes, now then,” Ned Tuttle’s voice sounded flat in the small space, “let’s get inside and see how far along Maurine is with supper. I’ll have Vada draw you a bath right away, so that you can get cleaned up beforehand.”

               An overwhelming surge of icy terror went through Holland, then, causing his heart to sputter and jump in his ribcage.

               So, Ned Tuttle did own slaves, then. There was no guarantee that he intended to make Holland into his latest acquisition, but Kell wasn’t exactly here to stop him, was he?

               Holland would stop him, if it came to that. He would rather die than be a slave again.

               “Are you alright?”

               It took a few horrifying seconds for Holland to catch his breath, remembering crunching bones, blood, humiliation, and above all, the empty mirth in his tormentors’ eyes.

               “Yes,” Holland gasped, far too late, searching Tuttle’s form for any signs of cruelty, any indication that he would flip a switch and turn sadistic. Suddenly, this tiny foyer seemed oddly reminiscent of the cell that the Danes had kept him in.

               Ned Tuttle scrutinized him with a gaze that perhaps was attempting to be piercing.

               “Alright, good. I’m sure of course that you’ll feel much better once you’re off your feet. Follow me, then.”

               He swung the door on Holland’s right open with a slight whine, and warm air filled with the smells of cooking meat and melted butter washed over him, making his stomach growl. Tuttle fluffed his hair with his fingers, shaking out what few drops of water were left from their journey, and then looked back at a wide-eyed Holland before closing the door.

               He supposed he had assumed that Kell had succeeded in scamming the man out of his life’s savings. He had thought wrong.

               Tuttle’s home was lavish and warm, with dark wooden floors and paneling rising to his navel. A wallpaper in deep scarlet, patterned with dying roses, stretched from that point to the ceiling, which was not high per se, but certainly higher than would be expected for a home that looked as compact as this one had on the outside. A long, exotic looking rug spanned the length of a long hallway in front of them, and Holland’s feet, which were soaked and freezing in his threadbare socks, were grateful for its softness. To his right was a heavy wooden door to a parlor with a crackling fire, several plush armchairs, and high-rising bookshelves. However, while a few of them did hold books, a vast majority instead housed strange oddities that Holland suspected had to do with Tuttle’s version of ‘magic’. He spotted a large jar of feathers, a translucent crystal ball, and a giant purple geode before Ned Tuttle beckoned him forward, their steps creaking all the way. Holland noted this carefully: if he was going to sneak out, he would either have to scale very closely to the walls (floors always creaked less near the wall or heavy furniture), or find a way out a window.

               Although strangely, the more the warmth of the house sunk into his bones, and the stronger the scent of butter, wafting through the hallway, grew, the less eager Holland was to run back to the elements. Death had, he recalled, been rather cold. And he was tired of cold.

               _Stupid, stupid, stupid,_ he chided himself. Of course, soon he knew that Tuttle would reveal some hidden, unprecedented level of cruelty that would make Holland regret the day he’d been born (though he did that most days, anyway), but for now, his will was weakened enough to ignore that fact.

               After the hallway, there was an open dining room, with a cobwebbed chandelier and a number of rather dreary paintings featuring shipwrecks and wandering figures on stormy moors. It was better lit in here than in the hallway, where the lamps had been few and far between, but Holland somehow felt more on edge, perhaps because there were fewer ways to escape, here, and perhaps because the eyes of the drowning sailors in the painting nearest him seemed to be looking straight through him.

               Beyond the dining room was an open doorway through which Holland could see, even over Tuttle’s tall shoulders, a chaos of cabinets, knives, and spices.

               Even over the clanging of pots and pans, it was possible to hear a woman singing about love:

_“It was many and many a year ago,_

_In a kingdom by the sea,_

_That a maiden there lived whom you may know_

_By the name of Annabel Lee;_

_And this maiden she lived with no other thought_

_Than to love and be loved by me.”_

               “Maurine?” Tuttle called.

               The singing abruptly ceased, as did the clanging of the pots and pans, and a harried woman in an apron appeared in the doorway, whisps of her grayish-brown hair escaping from the tight bun she had wrangled most of it into on the back of her head.

               Though most things about her immediately struck Holland as unremarkable, it was impossible not to take special notice of the deep scar running through her left eyebrow all the way straight down her face and to her jaw.

               “Ned!” she practically lit up, kissing him on both cheeks as though she hadn’t seen him in weeks. “Welcome back. I pray you didn’t suffer too greatly in the cold.”

               “Oh, but the cold never finds me, Miss Maurine,” he winked at her, as though they were sharing an in-joke, and Holland was suddenly struck by an immense embarrassment, to be present witnessing this display of affection. He shouldn’t be here.

               She obviously wasn’t a slave. No slave shared in-jokes with their master. Not that Holland knew of. Unless he was in for a new kind of psychological slavery the likes of which he had never seen.

               “Maurine,” Tuttle’s tone was suddenly all business as he gestured properly to Holland, “this is Holland Vosjik. Antari, friend of Kell Maresh, and proper warlock.”

               Numb as Holland was, it was difficult not to smirk at the ridiculousness of every single one of those titles.

               Maurine moved forward and grasped his hands warmly, and he wondered at her restraint when she didn’t flinch or lean away in the slightest when she got closer.

               “We are of course honored to have you, Mister Vosjik.” She let go, and turned back to Tuttle, “Although I can’t believe you let him hear my singing.”

               Tuttle rolled his eyes, half turning to Holland as though he wished to include him. “It isn’t my fault, Maurine, that you can’t shut up for a single half-second about pretty maidens. What was her name today? Anabelle?” Now, he looked directly _at_ Holland, who became even more nonplussed, “It’ll change by the day. Sometimes by the hour. If my heart had the reputation of Maurine’s, I think I would keep it to myself. Wouldn’t want anyone thinking I was collecting women like trophi—OW!”

               Maurine had hit him with a spoon, seemingly conjured from nowhere.

               “Don’t you pretend you care the slightest pinch about womankind.”

               Tuttle muttered something about caring _platonically,_ but it trailed off into nothingness, leaving them in a heavenly-scented silence.

               “Well,” Tuttle clapped his hands together, “Maurine, do you know where Vada is?”

               “She’s dusting your study.”

               “Excellent. I’m going to have her draw a bath for our guest, and then we’ll all eat supper. Holland, I hope you like yourself a meat pie. I’ll know the smell of Maurine’s anywhere. Also, I asked her to make them tonight.”

               Holland made himself nod. He was far too afraid to speak. Afraid to out himself as the outsider he was.

               There was a beat of silence, and then Maurine said, “It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Vosjik, and we are honored to have you.”

               “And you,” Holland threw the words hoarsely over his shoulder, as though they were nothing more consequential than his tattered jacket, and followed Tuttle back through the dining room, and up a dark, hidden staircase, opposite the parlor. Not, however, before Maurine began to sing again.

_“The angels, not half so happy in heaven,_

_Went envying her and me;_

_Yes, that was the reason (as all men know,_

_In this kingdom by the sea)_

_That the wind came out of the cloud by night,_

_Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope at least someone out there is enjoying this. I will try to keep updates somewhat quick, mostly because I don't want this to be a project that drags out too too long. I do have a very short story that I want to get a first draft of done, and then after that the next chapter should be up. Hope all y'all are doin alright.


	3. Chapter 3

               Holland followed Ned up a stuffy staircase, his eyes on the creaking wood beneath his feet and not on the man in front of him. His head went a little bit fuzzy at the ascension; it would have been impossible to ignore how hungry he was even _if_ Maurine’s cooking hadn’t made his stomach start growling in the most embarrassing way.

               They emerged into an open chamber, just a bit warmer than the downstairs had been. Though the stairs went up further, it appeared they were stopping here.

               On the wall opposite Holland was a large outcropping of windows, around which even more plush chairs were arranged. Though it was still sleeting miserably outside, the windows provided a surprising amount of light, which made the whole room seem more open than the downstairs had. That, and the fact that the walls were not so thickly hung with cobwebbed tapestries and paintings. Indeed, now that Holland saw what the house looked like without them, it struck him just how much dust there had been downstairs, every corner filthy with cobwebs.

              The most shocking feature of this room, meanwhile, was what appeared to be a human skeleton, swinging from a wire beside the window on one side, while a plant with long, spidery leaves dangled opposite it. It watched Holland emptily.

               Tuttle followed his gaze, and chuckled.

               “Ah that…that’s old George. I hope you don’t mind him terribly. He was in my study for a time, but I didn’t like him looking at me, so now he’s here.”

               Holland attempted to keep his alarm from showing on his face, but he knew he had failed when Tuttle’s expression sobered.

               “Oh, are you bothered? Would you like me to—?”

               “No,” Holland replied a bit too quickly, a bit too loudly. He was certain that Tuttle could hear his heart beating. “No, that’s not necessary,” he repeated, quieter.

               Tuttle clasped his hands in front of him, looking pathetically, genuinely apologetic, and Holland hated him for it. How pleasant life must be, for those with the privilege of seeing a skeleton not as a piece of lost life, but as a quirky decoration for one’s living quarters. How quaint Tuttle would have found Astrid and Athos Dane’s abode, the skeletons they walked on every time they left their beds in the morning.

               “Nonetheless, you have my deepest apologies. Should you need it to be moved, I of course can oblige. I don’t want anything present that will distract you from your craft.”

               Holland could have spat in his face.

               “Now then,” Tuttle clapped his hands together, “before Vada draws you your bath, I want to lay down a few rules for our household, just as a formality. She can fill you in on the details that she deems appropriate as she helps you.”

               A waifish girl with dark skin, darker eyes, and so much jewelry that it announced her long before she came into view slipped past them, smelling of cinnamon and cloves. She looked Holland up and down, wrinkled her nose, and continued out of the main chamber, down a hallway, and behind a door.

               “Yes,” Tuttle said, after she was out of sight again, “that is Vada. Now, as I was saying…” His expression suddenly grew quite serious, and there was a ghost of something in it that Holland found unfamiliar on his face, though he couldn’t quite place it. It was not cruelty, but it was similarly sharp. “We have recently installed a bathroom, state of the art, quite exciting I know, so we are privileged enough to have toilets and running water in our building. Vada will teach you everything about that, if you need it, I don’t know if they have it in your…former home. Vada and Maurine’s chambers are on this level, mine and what will be yours are on the upper level, along with my study. My study will be our workspace for the duration of your stay, and there are two guest bedrooms for you to choose between. One shares a wall with the study, the other with my room. Choose whichever you prefer. Since you don’t have clothes, I or Maurine will take you to buy some tomorrow. You are endlessly welcome to our food, our drink, anything that is needed to help you to feel more at home. While you are in the bath, I will run out to get you some basic necessities to get you through the night.”

               Holland, terrified of whatever invisible strings were attached to that kind of generosity, was about to open his mouth to contest that that was not necessary, when Tuttle cut him off rather abruptly.

               “No, no, don’t even try to tell me not to, I’ve already made up my mind. And it isn’t without a price, of course.”

               _Here it comes._

Something was more rigid about Tuttle’s posture, now. The childlike enthusiasm was gone from his gaze, to be replaced with a sternness that looked odd on his face. That was what Holland had seen earlier. No, it wasn’t cruelty, it was…an attempt at austerity.

               “This is my home,” Tuttle said, “therefore you will obey my rules, no matter how strange you may find them.”

               Holland’s surprise must have appeared as outrage to Tuttle.

               “Now, now, I don’t mean to accuse you of anything. I know you would never be intentionally rude, but in there are three rules that absolutely must be obeyed, no matter what, and here is what they are.” He held up a finger, “Number one is you are obliged to treat the servants—Maurine and Vada—as equals, not inferiors. They are both my very dear friends whom I love very much, and I have ended friendships before after watching them be mistreated by people in my life. I will not hesitate to do it again.

               “Number two,” he held up another finger, “is that you are never to go downstairs past ten p.m. Do as you see fit on the upper two floors, but never, and I mean _never_ go down to the first floor, no matter how ah…provoking the noise. You may hear weeping, or screaming, or howling like someone is in the greatest pain a wretch can experience, but you are never to go downstairs to investigate.”

               His hazel eyes flicked appraisingly up to Holland’s green ones.

               “Does this request alarm you?” he inquired, raising a brow.

               Holland kept his voice carefully neutral. “No.”

               Tuttle narrowed his eyes, as though he didn’t take him at his word, but slowly, he nodded.

               “Right then.” A little worry line appeared between his eyebrows. “Thank you for trusting me. I assure you that it isn’t…well, it isn’t quite so malicious as it sounds. The last rule is, of course, that you tell no other living soul, outside of Maurine, Vada, or me, what happens inside the walls of this house. I don’t know how your London is, but in mine, well…people talk. And the very last thing that I want is for my family to be at the mercy of cruel gossip. A bit of mystery keeps one not only safe in this life, but desirable. I have an acquaintance that would argue it makes everything just a smidge more delicious, even for your own consumption.”

               Holland hadn’t the faintest clue what that all meant, but he supposed if there was one thing the dead were good at, it was keeping silent, so Tuttle had no need to worry about that.

               “Do you agree to obey these rules, under the eyes of your God?”

               _My Gods have used me as a plaything,_ Holland thought, _I should hope that I displease them in every way I can._

               “Yes.”

               “Excellent!” Tuttle chirped, immediately switching back to his typical, excitable self. “Vada will answer any other questions you have, and it looks as though your bath is ready, so I will leave you to it.” He clapped Holland on the back, and Holland couldn’t stop himself from visibly flinching. Tuttle gave him a rather sad look before bandaging it with a pity smile and disappearing down the staircase.

               Holland raised his eyes to look at Vada, who was waiting near the door she had initially disappeared into with her arms crossed and her head tilted to the side.

               “Are you ready, then, Mr. Vosjik?”

               Hating himself, Holland followed her into the bathroom. The room itself was quite tiny. Between himself, Vada, and the steaming metal tub of water on the floor, there was barely any open floorspace. Against the wall was an elaborate contraption that Holland assumed to be a toilet, a rack with a towel, and a faucet near the ground. Finally, there was a tiny table with a bowl and a stack of smaller towels atop it, and a mirror that Holland looked at Vada through. Or, rather, she looked at him, expectancy in her dark eyes, the irises as onyx as Holland’s black eye used to be.

               There was something else familiar in them, but Holland couldn’t place it.

               “Well?” she raised a brow, and Holland lowered his gaze, his pulse rapid. Athos and Astrid Dane were suddenly there, their hands all over him, instruments of torture placed where nothing so sharp should be. It was difficult to organize his own speech when all he could hear was their laughter.

               “Please don’t…” _Calm down, calm down, calm down._ “Please leave me.” _Sanct, don’t look at me. Don’t touch my clothes, don’t look at me._

               Vada snorted and planted her feet, jingling slightly. “Please nothing. Maurine will _not_ let you eat with us if you come downstairs smelling like _that_.”

               Had Holland not been trying and failing to catch his breath, he might have flushed red with shame. As if Athos and Astrid had left him with any of that.

               His head swimming, he grabbed onto the table for support, his filthy nails digging into the wood.

               After a moment, Vada silently turned around, her long hair swinging.

               “I won’t look while you get in, but I don’t trust you here alone. Tell me when to turn around.”

               _Now_ Holland was red, but he once again had something akin to control. As he took a few, shuddering breaths, the Danes disappeared, replaced by peeling wallpaper and Vada’s gently jingling form.

               He hardly saw the point in getting clean, when he would just be putting on his filthy old clothes again afterwards. As they pooled at his feet on the floor, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and wondered why Vada hadn’t dropped the responsibility to getting him clean the first chance she’d gotten. He looked an utter wraith, his skin was a mess of scar tissue tinted an unhealthy grey, his ribs were jutting out and his muscles had long ago begun to atrophy from lack of nutrition. His eyes were as empty as George the Skeleton’s.

               Shakily, he got into the water, and the relief of its warmth enveloping his cold and weakened body was so acute that he had to stifle a groan in the back of his throat as he immersed himself fully.

               He couldn’t look at Vada, but he knew that she’d turned around again when her jewelry jingled. When she got behind him, his heart immediately started pounding again. Like a wildfire rekindled, the panic was back. _Don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t—_

Holland’s hand closed around her wrist, comically large compared to his, and she stiffened, dropping the sponge she’d been holding into the water. For a moment, he found himself frozen, the water suddenly too hot and somehow also freezing, a cold sweat breaking out over his body as he remembered hands all over him, and chains around his wrists.

               _Chains._

Holland drew Vada’s arm closer, and she stumbled into his line of view. Slowly, he drew his eyes from her wrists, to her neck, to her eyes, which held nothing of the aloofness they’d had when she’d watched him undress. Now, there was something vulnerable in them, Vada herself appearing quite small in their darkness as she looked out at him.

               There was no mistaking these kinds of marks. Suddenly, Holland knew that the bit of himself he had seen in Vada’s eyes was the self that Astrid and Athos had brutalized. The self that had been Osaron’s body. The self that wasn’t a self.

               Remembering himself, he loosened his grip, and was ashamed to see her exhale. He had caused her fear.

               After a moment more of examining the scars left by her chains in the dim light of the room’s tiny, curtained window, he looked up at her and asked hoarsely, “From him?”

               Holland was more than a little relieved to see her expression tighten with offense.

               “No,” she answered, still not moving an inch towards him.

               Reflexively, he gripped her arm tighter, and though fear lit up her eyes, it also locked Holland’s fingers in place.

               “From whom, then?” He was sweating desperation now, his hair plastered to his forehead with steam and fear.

               Holland realized too late that she did not return the recognition that was so obvious to him, that Vada did not have a perfect pokerface, but instead had not realized that Holland was a wearer of chains, not a holder of them.

               He suddenly dropped her arm like it had burned him, overcome with the first guilt he had felt in quite a long time as she backed away into the doorway, rubbing it sorely.

               “I am so sorry.”

               Her hair surrounded her head in curtains for a moment as she bowed it; when she raised it again, her eyes were shining with tears.

               “Please don’t touch me.” Her breath hitched on the last word, and before Holland could apologize, she had dashed out of the room, and Holland was left alone, addle-minded and unwashed, his grime already turning the water grey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally our dear Holland gets a bath. I'm changing the ratings on this story to accommodate some more mature themes I am adding in--I promise to do my best to handle them sensitively. I'm sorry this is so short and that it took so long, I have a great deal many other writing commitments I must attend to before I work on this, you must understand (editing manuscript, begging agents to read said manuscript, writing pretentious short stories). I do find this story quite cozy and relaxing to write, however, so I try to make time for it.
> 
> Thank y'all for reading and lemme know what you think of this so far.


	4. Chapter 4

               Holland figured that as long as he was naked in Ned Tuttle’s tub, he might as well get clean, even if that cleanliness served no long-term purpose. Feeling uncomfortably exposed, he’d almost gotten out and redressed himself immediately after Vada had left, but when he’d turned around, he’d found that his clothes were gone.

               There was nothing else to do but scrub. In spite of the lavish tapestries and expansive floor space of Tuttle’s abode, his soap was not much better than what Holland would have gotten in White London, when he had the luxury of it. Still, there was something satisfying about fighting the grime off of his skin, watching it wash away with the yellow suds and warm water. Holland pictured that Astrid and Athos, Osaron, Alox, Talya, and even Kell were washing off of him with it, leaving his skin red-raw, but clean.

               No matter how hard Holland scrubbed, however, he couldn’t wash away the internal taint. Though he was no longer rank, or crusted with dirt, the sallowness of his skin, emptiness behind his eyes, and the green in both of them reflected the reality that he was rotting on the inside.

               Holland stiffened when he heard Vada jingling back, an apology stuck in his throat. There had been a moment when he’d wondered if she would speak, but she had only set something down swiftly on the floor behind him, before leaving as quickly as she had come in a whiff of spice. When he turned around, he saw that it was a towel and clothing, but they weren’t his.

               He would have to apologize to Vada later, but he wasn’t in the slightest sure what to say. Holland wasn’t used to getting apologies, let alone giving them. As desperate as he was for companionship, for someone to confide in about all that had happened to him, all that they probably shared, he knew how traumatic a thing slavery was, and Vada’s scars said what her eyes didn’t about what it had done to her.

               As Holland dried himself and donned the new clothes, which he guessed had to be Ned’s, given how comically short yet baggy they were on him, he mulled over the master of the house himself. Vada had said that he hadn’t given her the scars on her wrists and neck, and Ned had demanded rather firmly that Holland treat the cook and Vada as equals. Still, he’d referred to them as servants…perhaps Ned was one of those masters that liked to think themselves progressive merely because they didn’t behave as outright sadists towards the people they owned.

               It was hard not to feel sick, putting his clothes on. The clothes of the man who used skeletons for decoration. Who had spent his life chasing the magic that Holland could never give him. Holland had a hunch that the more generosity he accepted from Ned now, the more explosive his rage would be once he knew that Holland had nothing to pay him back with.

               Yes, Holland didn’t trust him one bit. In fact, he ought not to trust Vada, either. He hadn’t the faintest clue what Tuttle and the rest of them were doing by night that caused people to scream, but it certainly couldn’t be anything good. The fact that Tuttle had felt the need to explicitly forbid him from interfering showed just how much Kell had influenced his view of Antari. Kell would undoubtedly gone downstairs to investigate, because he was used to people helping him when he screamed. Holland, on the other hand, was used to his screams falling on deaf ears, and so he had no qualms with allowing whatever was happening to happen. He certainly didn’t want to incur the wrath of Tuttle.

               _What if it’s Vada they’re abusing?_

               Perhaps Tuttle had told her to lie that her scars were not his doing. Perhaps he would be complicit in her brutalizing if he stayed upstairs. Perhaps this was some kind of twisted morality test. The Danes had given him those sometimes, as well. Dangled bloodied mothers and their newborn infants over pits of hungry dogs and forced him to choose, lest he be thrown in himself. Though obviously hypocritical, he still remembered the words they’d thrown at him after he made his choice. That he was cruel, heartless, obviously deserving of his torture for choosing to spare himself the agony of a thousand slobbering mouths eating him alive…

               A knock on the door made him jump, and Tuttle’s muffled voice followed.

               “Holland? Are you decent?”

               Holland recalled a second too late that Tuttle couldn’t see him nodding.

               “Yes.”

               When Ned Tuttle swung the door open, one arm clutching a bulging paper bag, his eyes immediately roved up and down Holland’s form.

               “Now, now,” he clicked his tongue with displeasure, frowning at Holland’s exposed ankles, “this won’t do.”

               Holland, suddenly enraged, wondered if he was supposed to apologize for being _tall._

               “But, that’s alright. I work at night, so tomorrow afternoon I will be free to go with you to get things that fit. Do you feel a bit better?”

               Holland nodded, listening to the sleet running down the window. Evidently, Tuttle heard it too, because the next thing he said was:

               “Goodness, looks like I’ve arrived just in time. This,” he held up the paper bag, “is things to get you through the night. We can get more tomorrow, but I’ll have Maurine make you up a tooth powder and rinse for tonight, and I believe she’s already got some of that sleet melting in a bowl for face washes for all of us. Have you decided on a room yet?”

               Holland shook his head. Beyond Tuttle, the upstairs was considerably darker. The winter sun had set while he was in the bath, so the house was now lit by gaslamps, flickering and casting shadows across the exotic rugs covering the floors.

               “Well,” Tuttle handed him the bag, and Holland took it shakily, “choose one of the two. They’re just up the stairs on the top floor, immediately on your right and left. Maurine is just about finished with the pies downstairs, so come down when you’re ready.” He turned to go, but after taking a few steps away, he spun around to add over his shoulder, “Oh, and don’t worry about appearing unkempt.” He ruffled his hair with a hand, offering an awkward smile, “We don’t really turn our noses up at that kind of thing, in this house.”

               Holland stared, wondering at whether Tuttle had just done just precisely that, when appraising his appearance in the borrowed clothing, but he nodded after a heavy silence.

               Some of the playfulness disappeared from Tuttle’s expression at his lack of enthusiasm, but the man still swaggered away with a pep in his step, stomping down the stairs with the same inexhaustible energy.

               Holland wondered if his inability to match Tuttle’s demeanor would cause the man to hate him before he even found out he didn’t have magic. He probably regretted that it was Holland here and not Kell.

               Clutching his bag of donations, Holland creaked down the flickering hallway, the smell of cooked meat faintly detectable in the stairwell. With one hand on the bannister, he began to climb in the near pitch dark, ascending until he emerged onto a floor even more claustrophobic than the lowest level had been, which was only lit by what little moonlight managed to filter through both the storm-clouds above London and the translucent window just behind Holland. There was only a small square of floorspace, and then two doors immediately in front of him, and one on both his left and his right. Holland chose the left.

               The space was over-furnished and had no windows. Bulky dark furniture crowded into what little space was not taken up by a massive, canopied bed, and all of it sat on a thick rug, patterned with bouquets of flowers connected by intertwining ribbons.

               Holland felt it hard to breathe even standing here with the door open, so he imagined the place would feel more than a little bit like a prison if he shut the door behind him.

               He crossed the hallway, if you could the tiny piece of floorspace that, cringing at how loudly his steps were creaking, and tried the other room.

               This one had a window, and no rug on the floors. Good. The fewer layers that separated your feet from the floor, the easier it was to get a feel for its quirks, to walk in silence. With a crinkle, Holland set his paper bag on the bed, which had no canopy, but was piled just as high with pillows and throw blankets as the one in the other room had been. When he looked out the window it was difficult to see much, but he knew from the far-off glow of the lights and the blurry shapes moving past that it faced the streets of London. Also good. He would be able to watch who came to the house this way.

               Not that he intended on staying, of course.

               Holland couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a bedroom. His bedroom at White London had contained the bare minimum. They hadn’t had the money for aesthetics—no one but the Danes had—so his living space had been a mismatch of salvaged furniture.

               He ran a hand along the bedspread, and it was intricately woven with itchy thread that shone silver in the light from the window. Holland, with a pang, wished that he had his bed from home, piled high with animal skins, dense, soft, and warm. Not that they’d ever felt warm in that house, but if they were here, they surely would.

               Mentally, he slapped himself. How stupid he was, to be longing for the same home that had betrayed him. He _had_ no home. He didn’t know why he bothered choosing the more comfortable room here like it _mattered_ , like he _deserved_ to have a space he _liked_. Sanct, how frivolous he had become in a span of mere hours. It was likely that Tuttle was going to make him pay in some invisible way for choosing the better room, and the one next to his own, at that.

               At that thought, Holland was suddenly overcome by the most desperate curiosity.

               Tuttle’s room was right next door. They would come looking for him, soon, no doubt, and if they discovered him in Tuttle’s room, there would be hell to pay, but going through the man’s things was a surefire way for Holland to know what was in store for him.

               Barefoot (they hadn’t given him shoes, or even stockings, and had taken his old ones before the bath), he padded to his door, keeping close to the wall. Slipping across the way to Tuttle’s door, which was opposite the stairway, Holland slowly, carefully, turned the knob.

               It opened with the softest of creaks.

               Tuttle’s room was organized and furnished in much the same way as the guest rooms were, but what really struck Holland was what _wasn’t_ there, as opposed to what was.

               Perhaps all of it was concentrated in the study next door, but there was but a single crystal to be found in the entire room. There were no wands, no trinkets, no crystal balls, none of the magical gimmicks that had been in the parlor downstairs, or that had been suggested by the presence of George the Skeleton. To the naked eye, Tuttle’s room was utterly…conventional.

               Heart pounding, Holland slipped inside the room, leaving the door open barely a crack behind him, and started going through the dresser immediately to his left. In the first was socks, the second, undergarments, the third, a wide array of phallic objects that Holland could guess the purpose for.

               The fourth held wax seals, bottles of ink (one that appeared to have been spilled rather recently—Holland didn’t set it upright, lest his fingers become stained), and parchment. The fifth, gloves and scarves in every color, silk flowers and spare buttons.

               The last opened with a slight flutter, and was filled nearly to the top with letters. Holland carefully shuffled through them, but he could find nothing hidden underneath. Squinting in the darkness, he tried to read the scrawling, dramatic cursive.

               _I miss you every day, my love. The beating sun here cannot compare to your warmth. The spices here are growing on me, but I must say I miss Maurine’s potatoes dearly. Moreover, I miss having bearable company for dinner. All but a few of my colleagues refuse to engage with me save for purposes of work alone, and those that don’t damn themselves to the same treatment. I had thought that their rejection would hurt less, after what happened with my family, but it only seems to reopen the seams that had sewn that wound shut. Of course, I will be healed all over again when I hold you. I plan to return home with a Christmas’s worth of gifts from the marketplaces, some to help you in your craft, and some to help us with magic of another sort. Now, don’t think that way, Ned, you know that Stella feeds off your vulgarity. How is she? How is everyone? Moreover, how are you? I dream of you every night, and count down the days until I set sail._

_Most tenderly yours,_

_-Theodore_

The letter smelled of jasmine, and was dated November 1st, 1886. Holland straightened up, thinking of Rhy and Alucard.

               Though it certainly was possible, it was hard to imagine someone treating a cruel man with such tenderness. The Danes had never had lovers, save their slaves and, on occasion, each other, but it had always been a twisted bastardization of love, never something this earnest, this gentle. Could this be proof that Tuttle was good, that Holland had nothing to fear from him? The notion seemed too good to be true.

               He wondered how long it had been since Tuttle had received the letter. Was it still 1886? Perhaps this letter was old, and the love between Tuttle and…Theodore had long ago soured, turning him cruel.

               But then, that was reaching. And Holland was grateful that it was reaching.

               He put the letter back, closing the drawer and scanning the rest of the room. The only object of interest he could see was a black-and-white picture on the bedside table, which, Holland saw, as he creeped closer, featured Ned Tuttle and a slightly taller man with glasses and dark, curly hair, sitting side by side, their hands clasped. There were gentle smiles on both of their faces. Underneath the frame was a pinkish crystal atop a note in the same handwriting:

               _A rose-quartz for my favorite magician. Apparently, they’re used in love spells. –T_

“My dearest friend, Theodore.”

               Holland nearly jumped out of his skin. He hadn’t even heard the door open.

               When he turned around, slowly, so that it would not seem as though he had been doing something he shouldn’t, Ned Tuttle was standing in the doorway with one arm wrapped around himself, and the other holding an unlit candle. Holland could just barely see a tiny wisp of smoke unfurling from its wick.

               “Apologies,” Holland said hoarsely, clenching a fist to keep his fingers from trembling, “I shouldn’t have—”

               “No, no, I understand your curiosity,” Tuttle meandered across the room stiffly. All of his easy-excitement, his warm nonchalance from earlier, had dissipated like the candle’s smoke, to be replaced by a cheap imitation. “We are an unusual household, I understand. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you in the dark, my candle went out as I went up the stairs, you know how it is.” He laughed breathily, and Holland backed up as he forced his body between Holland and the bedside table.

               “Yes, that is,” he pocketed the note from the rose-quartz, meeting Holland’s eyes with an unexplainable defiance, “my dearest friend Theodore. Practically grew up together, you see. He’s like a brother to me.”

               Holland was too confused to nod.

               “Yes, right,” Tuttle ran his free hand through his hair, and continued to babble, “I am certain you are hungry after your long journey here. I myself would rather be by the fire downstairs than up here in the dark. Wouldn’t you?”

               Holland nodded.

               “After you, then.”

               And at his invitation, Holland walked ahead of Tuttle towards the stairway and the tantalizing smell of meat-pie. He was not so distracted by his stomach, however, that he did not hear the distinct jingle of keys, and the turn of one in a lock, behind him before Tuttle’s footsteps followed him to dinner.

              

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will bring a tasty (and unconventional) dinner...and hopefully some reconciliation between Vada and Holland. I wonder what's up with Theodore and Stella. Who are those mysterious characters? :O
> 
> I've been feeling utterly dejected lately due to the current political administration. Oh how I long for the days when I could write fanfiction about Captain America punching Trump in the face. Now I can hardly look at a flag without feeling nauseated. I hope y'all are staying safe and can take as much comfort from reading this cozy hurt/comfort gay Victorian fanfic as I take from writing it. 
> 
> See you all next time and please take care of yourselves the way that Tuttle's #squad will take care of Holland (that is, excessively and with unprecedented generosity and kindness). <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, okay a few notes before we start here.
> 
> I just got home for Thanksgiving and had a look at my Shades of Magic books...I know I've fucked up the timeline a little bit by putting Tuttle in Victorian England when he actually lived under George III. But let's just pretend for the sake of this story he lived in Victorian times. Because I said so. And because I want to be able to mention Tuttle's dealings with Oscar Wilde. Fight my gay ass.
> 
> Also, I'm sorry for the delay! You cannot imagine the panic I was struck by when I looked at the "Last Updated" page and saw that it had been two whole weeks since I posted a chapter! Agh! I realized that I wasn't happy with my novel manuscript and so spent a good deal of time chopping out literally thousands of words from it before I start the query process once more. Updates will hopefully be more frequent now, but then, famous last words I guess. Just know that I have the whole story outlined, and so know where it is going.

               Holland hurried down the stairs, his embarrassment at being caught snooping overriding his lack of enthusiasm about dinner. The fruitless act of forcing sustenance into a doomed body was nothing, apparently, compared to facing the host he had wrongly snooped upon. A part of him was surprised by his mere ability to feel shame in wake of the event. Apparently, there were still untapped reservoirs of pride inside of him, untouched by the drought of slavery.

               There was something strangely alarming about it, in the same way that there was something strangely alarming about his legitimate hunger for Maurine’s cooking.

               When he got to the kitchen, she smiled a warm smile that reached all the way to her eyes, which were the same color as the crust of the massive pie she handed him. Holland nodded at her, wishing just a bit that he could return the expression, but knowing that it would seem manufactured if he did, and so settling for turning to bring the pie to the dining room table.

               It was then that he noticed it hadn’t yet been set. Yes, there was a table runner and two elaborate, iron candlesticks, but the entire arrangement was just as covered with cobwebs as the heavy, black chandelier hanging from above. There was not a plate or piece of silverware to be seen. Holland would have assumed that he or one of the other servants was meant to set it, but to his eye, it appeared that no one had sat down to eat here for a good decade. The whole scene was reminiscent of a starving time in White London. His family had never had money, but he had watched as others, affluent at first, suffered tragedy, sold their crystal, and allowed their massive dining rooms to go unused as champagne and roast beef were replaced with beans and black bread.

               “Oh, Holland!”

               It was Maurine that had spoken, but when he looked up, Ned Tuttle had entered the dining room. Holland’s eyes quickly found their way back to the former.

               “We don’t eat in here,” she said, putting a hand on Holland’s back and pointing towards the doorway. “Sorry, I do know it’s a bit strange. We always eat in the parlor, by the fire.” Her skirts swished at his exposed ankles when she turned back to the kitchen, and Holland remembered how utterly ridiculous he looked in Tuttle’s borrowed clothing. He avoided looking Ned in the eye as he shuffled past, clutching the pie so tightly it burned his hands. Holland certainly didn’t need to be dropping their dinner when already he had been caught reading the love letters of the man who had offered him sanctuary. He heard Tuttle mutter something unintelligible to Maurine, just before he was out of earshot, but he couldn’t find it in himself to summon any kind of indignance. Whatever it was, he probably deserved it.

               When Holland entered the parlor, he was surprised to find Vada perched on a plush chair by the fire with a pie of her own, identical to his. He had assumed that the pie in his hands was for all four of them. The size of his head and the weight of it, too, it was the sort of thing he would have daydreamed about gorging on when the Danes were starving him. And now it was his.

               Horrifyingly, he started to tear up.

               “Holland, excuse me, dear,” Tuttle said from behind him.

               Holland couldn’t stop himself from starting slightly, but at the very least, he didn’t jump. Promptly, he moved aside and sat down in the chair nearest to him, closest to the door, and farthest from Vada, who wasn’t looking at him. Tuttle sat down opposite Holland, and Maurine handed him a fork before taking the chair next to him.

               “The ladies have the best seats tonight, it would seem,” she chirped, scraping her fork on her pie’s hard crust. “Probably because they’re the ones responsible for tonight’s _scrumptious_ meal.”

               “You always were humble, Maurine,” Tuttle said, breaking the crust of his pie and allowing a massive plume of steam to escape. Holland already knew he would be unable to wait for his to cool. It smelled good enough that he didn’t care if he burned his mouth.

               “Humble doesn’t get you wom—I mean, worldly experience and success.”

               Had Holland been a bit less preoccupied with his food, he might have taken notice of how nervous both Maurine and Tuttle looked, just then. An awkward silence followed.

               “Oh, goodness,” Tuttle said suddenly. “Holland, I forget myself. I assumed that since you were a…well, I assumed that you wouldn’t want to say grace. I’ve…” he shook his head, agitated, “…I fear I’ve exposed us as utter heathens.”

               Holland was beginning to suspect that this evening was hell-bent on taking his fears and replacing them with utter confusion. Had he seen this kind of an expression on Tuttle’s face when he had first arrived, he might have thought that it was born of a displeasure towards him…maybe in wake of his trespassing, he ought not have discarded that possibility so quickly. However, he couldn’t help but feel that the agitation he saw in Tuttle now was something to do with himself, more than with anyone else in the room. A personal fear, as close to him as the rose-quartz in his pocket.

               “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Holland confessed coolly, watching Tuttle’s reaction carefully. “We don’t…say grace in my London.”

               Obviously. If Tuttle was really so obsessed with Red London and magic, he perhaps ought to have known that.

               And there it was. Tuttle’s golden eyes were flooded with a relief that even the flickering shadows of the fireplace could not hide. This was followed by a darkening of his expression as he realized his error.

               “Ah. Right. Yes of course, I should have…probably known.” Tuttle then shoved a massive piece of still clearly scalding pie into his mouth, narrowly avoiding spitting it all out onto the carpet. Holland watched him try to chew it with mild amusement.

               “Grace is something,” Maurine explained softly, her gaze forcing Holland’s away from Tuttle’s suffering, “that people…here say before they eat, every time they eat. It’s an action of faith. We could get into a right scandal if someone found out we don’t say it. Of course we don’t think you’re any more heathen than us if you don’t, or never have.”

               Holland felt a rush of gratitude towards Maurine, with her scar and soft explanations.

               “Grace is also something,” Vada said, with a smirk at Ned, “that God Almighty failed to bestow upon Ned Tuttle when He made him.”

               Ned quickly went from trying to choke down the scalding pie to trying to do it while laughing, an unfortunate turn of events for his esophagus, Holland was sure. When he finally did manage to get the pie down, his eyes were watering.

               “I can be graceful when I’m not hungry.”

               Vada rolled her dark eyes. “You’re always hungry. Maurine knows firsthand.”

               Maurine turned confidentially to Holland. “It’s true.”

               Though he appreciated her efforts to include him in their banter, Holland kept his mouth resiliently shut for most of the ensuing conversation. He poked some holes in the crust of his pie and let his strange three hosts’ merry arguing fall into the background as he watched the steam rise up.

He hated himself for losing his momentum, but it was hard to maintain his motivation to sneak out and die in the streets when the hearth was sapping his bones of aches born of cold and his hair was clean for the first time in weeks. Try as he might, he could not override simple survival instinct. He would have to remember that the next time that he was offered comfort. As good as things might seem now, he could not allow material pleasures to trick him into enduring more of life’s misery.

               Suddenly, there was uproarious laughter from the group, and Holland was drawn out of his reverie.

               “I keep forgetting,” Maurine cackled, putting a hand on his arm, “that I don’t have to be so careful around you, Holland. Most times when we find new friends, we must allow them time to become accustomed to our oddities.”

               Holland certainly thought he could have used a bit of that extra time, but he kept this thought to himself, and shoveled a large piece of pie into his mouth, praying that no one had seen him flinch when she touched him.

               The pie was utterly heavenly. As children in White London, he and Alox had been lucky on the weeks they had salt, and when he’d gotten older and been enslaved, he’d obviously become accustomed to nothing but unseasoned gruel. Meanwhile, in the Red London palace kitchens, everything was so drowned in spice that it was nearly inedible. But this, this had a perfect, fragrant balance, delicate and punchy seasonings (though he obviously could not name them by memory) married with the salt of mincemeat and the sweetness of dried fruit, all encased in a buttery, flaky crust that melted in his mouth.

               It took him a moment to realize that someone had just spoken to him, and they were all looking at him expectantly. He swallowed quickly, the pie warming him from the inside as it traveled down.

               “I’m sorry,” he said to Maurine, feeling rather stupid, “this is just so delicious.”

               “It’s no trouble,” she smirked, wholesomely self-satisfied. The expression reminded him of Delilah Bard, if she had had manners. “I know that my talents can be a bit overwhelming, at first.”

               Tuttle laughed. “Please. Holland lived with Kell in the Red London _palace_ , didn’t you, Holland? I’m sure to your taste buds our fare is quite humble.”

               Vada’s head snapped up to look at him, and Holland’s stomach squirmed. He put his fork down.

               “Did Kell tell you that?” he asked, as all traces of mirth drained from the room.

               Tuttle was watching him attentively, apparently not used to being fed wrong information. “Well, not exactly. But I assumed, since he knew you, and you were both Antari…”

               “It,” Holland said slowly, “wasn’t exactly like that.” He tried to steal a glance at Vada, but she was looking down into her pie. “I lived in the palace for the past few weeks, but it wasn’t exactly my choice.”

               Tuttle balked. “Surely, the two of you were at least friends?” Then, something haunting entered his expression. “Surely you weren’t his…captive? You _are_ here of your own free will, yes? I am quite opposed to slavery, I couldn’t live with myself if you were here by Kell’s wishes and not your own—”

               Oh, to have had this conversation earlier. Before he’d known what Grey London cold felt like, the air saturated with ice that reached down to your bones, the fog thick with filth and sickness. Had Holland avoided the comfort of a hot bath, of a full stomach, of friendly faces, for just a bit longer, he might have been able to use this conversation as his way out of Tuttle’s house and then of life.

               But leaving would mean cold, pain, and poverty, and Holland remembered the hostile glares of the men in the bar when they’d smelled his unwashed body. This London didn’t treat its poor well, not that any really did. It didn’t exactly make sense to kill himself to end the pain, if the process of suicide would result in even more pain than living.

               “I am here because I want to be.” Holland cut Tuttle off, unsure if it was even a complete lie anymore. “No, Kell was not my friend. Just because we are of the same race, does not mean we had anything else in common. When there are so few of you, it draws you together, for better or for worse.”

               Maurine nodded solemnly. “I think I understand what you mean. There are so few Sapphic—”

               “But I don’t think it _is_ entirely the same, is it, Maurine?” Tuttle interrupted loudly, to Holland’s befuddlement. “After all, being Antari is in the blood. Quite unlike Sapphic friendships.”

               Something flashed behind Maurine’s eyes.

“What is a Sapphic friendship?” Holland ventured, suddenly curious.

               So oppressive was the following silence that the crackling fire was the loudest thing in the room. Tuttle was looking at Maurine like he was ready to personally bake _her_ into a pie. Maurine was looking back at him with a mixture of apology and horror. And Vada? Vada was staring into her pie like it held the answers to the universe’s great questions, including but not limited to what precisely a “Sapphic” friendship was.

               “A…” Ned Tuttle started, with his voice even but his eyes fiery. “A Sapphic _friendship_ is a very close _platonic_ relationship between two women.”

               Holland thought back to the picture frame upstairs. Tuttle’s dear _friend_ Theodore. His dear friend who wrote him love letters seasoned liberally with innuendo. The panic upon seeing Holland stumble upon them. The subsequent locking of the door. Had Tuttle not seemed so clearly panicked now, Holland might have assumed he had just been embarrassed to find someone snooping. Now he wondered if something more was afoot.

               “But that wasn’t how you used it,” Holland pointed out, turning to Maurine. “It sounded like you were going to say Sapphic _women_. Not Sapphic friendships.”

               “Women,” she smiled tightly, a glint of fear in her eyes now, too, “who have Sapphic friendships are called Sapphic.”

               “Oh,” Holland conceded. He debated asking if there was a male equivalent, just to get Ned to squirm, but decided against it. He might very well take it out on Maurine or Vada later, and that wouldn’t do.

               Still, he didn’t understand why Tuttle was being so damn _off_ about homosexuality. Because that was what this was, wasn’t it? No one had batted an eye at Rhy and Alucard in Red London, and the inhabitants of White London had been too preoccupied with rotting on the inside to really give a damn who slept with who. Was it criminalized here? Holland thought it petty, but then again, Grey London didn’t exactly have much going on, did it?

               Sanct. It was hard to be indifferent when Tuttle and crew seemed just _begging_ for curiosity.

               “A great pity,” Tuttle said, “that you and Kell are not close. Here in Grey London, we value our friendships quite deeply.”

               Holland watched him evenly. “I’ve gathered.”

               Something flickered behind Tuttle’s eyes. He stood.

               “Well, Holland, perhaps tomorrow night we can talk less about us, and learn more about you and your London. I imagine you’re exhausted, so I don’t want to force you to monologue just now.”

               The dismissal was a bitter one. Holland had hardly finished half of his pie. Stuffed though he was, his starving body was aching for more.

               Although, in spite of himself, he was quite exhausted. Sleep didn’t sound so terrible right now, either. He could try to get information out of Maurine, tomorrow, and see whether this London truly was worth staying alive for.

               “I’ll get your dishes, Holland,” Maurine tore his pie from his hands, and turned around to take Vada’s, as well. “Ned is right. You should get some rest. We’ll try to keep quiet.”

               “Tomorrow,” Ned said, “we’ll discuss lesson plans and payment.”

               Holland frowned. “I’d thought that my shelter was to be my payment.”

               Ned opened and closed his mouth a few times before speaking. “I’ve come to my senses. The service of an Antari is worth more than I initially priced it.”

               Maurine glared at him as he spoke with one hand on her hip, and the other straining to support her, Vada’s, and Holland’s dishes.

               Holland watched the exchange with interest, but wasn’t so stupid as to think anything worth hearing would be said while he was in the room. He started towards the door. “Thank you.”

               “You’re welcome. You can find your room again, I trust?”

               Holland paused in the doorframe and turned to nod over his shoulder.

               “Good. Don’t get lost.”

               It perhaps would have sounded like a threat, if Tuttle himself wasn’t so utterly unthreatening. No longer was he the potential slaveowner. He was Rhy—no, Rhy would never have written love letters, Kell wouldn’t have let him see the end of it. He was a person more romantic and dramatic than Holland had ever seen, who ate pie with his servants and locked doors assuming they would keep Holland out.

               And without his magic, they would keep him out better, but if Ned thought that Holland was the same breed of pampered, pompous brat that he and Kell were, he had another thing coming.

               “I won’t.”

*

               Holland barely made it to the top of the first staircase before the arguing started. The stairs were painfully creaky, so it was unlikely he could subtly ascend them once things calmed down without the whole house knowing he’d snooped on their private affairs yet again. It was very possible he was underestimating Ned’s capacity for cruelty, and that he would throw Holland out in a fit of rage if he pushed too far…but then, it wasn’t like Holland hadn’t experienced worse than homelessness.

               And of course, if the worst happened, he could throw himself into that filthy river with bricks strapped to his feet. Maybe his skeleton would end up on display in the house of another Ned Tuttle, a cute decorating quirk to converse with guests over.

               So, he listened in.

               “ _Well, a right job you did of that.”_ Tuttle clapped. _“Your subtlety is unparalleled.”_

 _“I thought if I tiptoed around it, it would only seem more evident!”_ Maurine protested.

               _“Oh!”_ Ned exclaimed. _“What a brilliant strategy! I’d never have thought of that. Be obvious to be subtle! Your mind is truly a gem, Maurine.”_

_“When he got here, you were joking about my love for women!”_

_“Well, you didn’t give me much of a choice, did you? Anabelle Lee this and that. You’ll Anabelle_ leave _her and compose a new opera to the next one come Wednesday.”_

 _“I wish the two of you wouldn’t fight,”_ Vada chimed in, her volume significantly lower than the others.

               _“I wish,”_ Maurine said, after a lull, _“that you hadn’t offered him extra money. You know we can’t afford that.”_

 _“Listen,”_ Ned said so softly that Holland had to strain to hear, _“once Theo gets back that won’t be a problem. Maurine I’ve seen—”_ He laughed with an alarming reverence. _“—I’ve seen what these Antari can do. If this one’s powers are anywhere near to what Kell’s were, we will be the wealthiest people in London in a matter of weeks. Our seances will be beyond compare. There’ll be no need for props or effects anymore.”_

_“Because he can do real magic?”_

_“Yes!”_ Tuttle exclaimed. _“You’ll see. He’ll teach me, and we’ll be set for life.”_

 _“What use will you have for me, if you will be doing all the effects?”_ Vada interjected.

               _“Why, you can act!”_ Ned asserted. _“With the rest of us, you will act.”_

_“If he’s such a magician, then how can he judge us for…?”_

That silenced Tuttle. Eventually he said, _“We can’t be too careful.”_

Maurine responded with something about how associating with a man called “Oscar” would always draw eyes, or something like that. Tuttle responded that acting outside of the norm in any way would always draw eyes, no matter how wealthy they were or weren’t.

               _“Would you like him to leave?”_ Tuttle asked suddenly, making Holland’s heart leap into his chest.

               A heavy sigh. Holland thought it came from Maurine.

               _“Even if we said yes, you’d keep him here, Doctor Faustus.”_ Indeed, it was Maurine who spoke. _“But it doesn’t matter,”_ she added after a moment, “ _I like him.”_

Holland didn’t expect how moved he would be by a statement like that.

               _“I don’t.”_

Or how devastated he would be by a statement like that. But maybe he had only felt relief and disappointment, respectively. Even if that was true, he would have no reason to. Regardless, Holland sensed the conversation lulling, so he carefully tiptoed up the rest of the stairs to the third floor, shutting his door behind him as quietly as he could.

               The paper bag of necessities that Ned had brought crackled as Holland sorted through it. A small brush, no, make that two. Undergarments and thick socks. Tweezers and tiny scissors.

               A knock at the door made him jump. “Come in.”

               It was Maurine. “I’ve made you up a tooth powder,” she said, holding out a small dish to him. “And here is a bowl of rainwater to rinse with.” Holland’s arms shook as he took this, too, taking care not to spill it. It was difficult to tell if the water was truly murky, or if he was just having difficulty seeing in the darkness.

               Maurine laughed softly. “Can…Antari see in pitch black?”

               Holland huffed, setting the bowl of water down on a dresser. “Anyone can. Your eyes just need to adjust.” He was so used to being able to summon fire that he’d forgotten to bring a candle. Only the common rooms and hallways were lit by gaslamps—the bedrooms had no light source that he could see.

               “I was hoping you’d have brought a candle up. I’ll fetch you one.”

               “I can—” Holland started. After what had happened with Vada, he was even less comfortable with the idea of being doted upon than usual.

               “It’ll only take a second.”

               True to her word, it did, and soon Holland’s room was filled with flickering light and dancing shadows. Maurine stepped past him to set the candle down next to the bowl of water and dish of powder. With her other hand, she held out a few small towels, and a long garment he would later discover to be a nightgown, to him.

               “For washing your face, if you need, and for wearing while you sleep,” she said. “I trust you remember where the bathroom is—?”

               “Yes,” Holland said hurriedly. “Yes, I recall.”

               He met Maurine’s eyes in the mirror above the dresser. It was dirty and cracked, offering an imperfect and grotesque reflection of them both that Red London’s polished mirrors would have laughed at.

               “Well,” she said, “goodnight, Holland.”

               Holland didn’t know why, but he had great difficulty responding to such a mundane dismissal. Perhaps it was because the only people he’d ever said goodnight to had ended up trying to kill him. Perhaps it was because he knew that Grey London was not as dangerous as White, and therefore could never fulfill that pattern. Perhaps it was because he knew he would never truly be able to see this place as a home if it didn’t.

               “Thank you,” he finally managed, when she was halfway out the door. When she turned to look at him over her shoulder, surprise was evident in her scarred face.

               “You’re welcome.” She nodded curtly. “Sleep well.”

               Holland knew full well he could not make good on that command. But under Ned Tuttle’s roof, at the very least, he did not have to obey.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading, yall. Let me know as per usual what you thought of this!!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again my loves! I hope everyone is doing okay. If you're in the US, I hope you're staying safe in all this nasty weather. Today where I was at it was thunderstorming while the sun was out...jinkies.
> 
> Enjoy the chapter. xx

               Holland had assumed they would scream like him.

               He hadn’t expected to sleep that night. Not really. In fact, he did his best not to sleep most nights, avoiding unconsciousness until his legs gave out beneath him and his mind overrode his will-power, dragging him into slumber like Talya had once dragged him off the sofa to dance. Before, of course, he’d woken up to the whistle of the knife she’d brought down towards his chest. Before he’d soaked their bed in her lifesblood, erasing the delicate remnants of maidenhood that they had, he’d assumed, lovingly stained the sheets with mere hours earlier.

               No, usually Holland did his very best not to sleep. Sleep meant memories. Memories of Athos’s knife opening him up like a corpse for autopsy. His own mouth, forced to form the word “yes,” forced to thank his masters for their torture. His mind beginning to believe that those words were truly his, that he truly was the filthy, pathetic toy they made him out to be. Osaron’s voice, clear as it ever had been in his waking life. Alox turned to stone by his own hand. Yes, he hadn’t asked to be a slave, but he had killed three before then. He had been rotten from the start.

               And then, waking up to realize that it had not all just been a figment of his imagination. That it had all been real, and his torturers had won, and had tainted him beyond fixing, marred his life beyond recognition. Holland hated sleep because it reiterated the fact that he was fundamentally, irreparably broken.

               Which he knew. But he didn’t exactly need to be reminded of it every night.

               And yet, he’d dozed off shortly after cleaning up for the night and changing into the sleep-gown that Maurine had provided him with. Not only had he dozed off, but he had dozed off into a dreamless sleep, a blessing beyond compare. He had forgotten all about Tuttle’s warning about the racket night would bring until it had jolted him awake in the form of a shrill scream of terror. A woman’s scream.

               Holland sat up in bed, listening. It was still pitch dark outside, but the rain outside his window seemed to have stopped, leaving him with no white noise to distract him from whatever was taking place downstairs.

               He was a bit surprised to find that the scream didn’t bring his initial fears rushing back. It wasn’t the kind of scream that he had uttered under the knife of Athos Dane, nor was it the scream that Athos’s victims had uttered when Holland had been forced to practice the same torture on them. There was no surprise in the screams of those victims, only animalistic agony and anguish. Perpetual despair.

               But this, this _was_ a scream of surprise, if a terrified one.

               Holland strained his ears to hear more, but was rewarded with nothing for several minutes. He was just beginning to consider whether he would take a gamble and see if he could return to the dreamless slumber he’d achieved before when he heard a collective gasp, coupled with the sound of several chairs scooting back at once.

               _The dining room._

What on Earth were they using it for, if not to eat? This wasn’t torture, but it certainly was fear. Moreover, it sounded like the fear of many people. Why did they not leave, if they were so afraid? Assuming that Tuttle hadn’t actually managed to pick up a bit of magic and was giving them some sort of show.

               Holland, full of existential despair though he was, came dangerously close to laughing aloud at _that._

               Slowly, he got out of bed, using a long leg to close the distance between himself and the door in a single stride. He pressed his ear to the wall, listening.

               Someone was speaking. No, someone was weeping. A woman with a crackly, trembling voice that made it nearly impossible to distinguish one word from the next.

               _“Thank you…thank you…”_

Holland listened as what sounded like a group of people trudged their way to the front of the house. He hurried to his window, wiping away the condensation with a sleeve, and squinted, grateful that he hadn’t lit a candle.

               Sure enough, an old, obese woman was being helped outside to a carriage by none other than Ned Tuttle. She was hunched over, sobbing as hard as it had been raining earlier. There was an older gentleman with her who Holland assumed was her partner. Also with them were, he was shocked to find, two small children, no older than eight or nine. These were not crying. Holland didn’t see Maurine or Vada anywhere.

               His heart nearly stopped when Ned Tuttle tapped the old woman on her shoulder, just as she was about to step into her carriage, and pointed directly at Holland.

               _Sanct._

Holland dropped to the floor as quickly as possible, bruising his knees on the hardwood. When he slowly lifted his head to check if the coast was clear, he was nonplussed to find that the elderly woman was _waving at him_.

               He would almost have thought he was dreaming, if his dreams were ever so benign. Holland watched for a bit longer as Tuttle herded the woman, the man, and the two children into the carriage, which quickly bounded into the foggy night. More confused than ever, he sat down on his bed, expecting Ned to come upstairs and explain the incident, but he did no such thing. Eventually he became bored enough that he convinced himself no nightmares would find him if he fell back asleep. He was wrong.

*

               The next morning, Holland, groggy and shaken, followed the smell of butter downstairs. Dressed in the same borrowed garments he’d worn the day before, he leaned against the kitchen doorframe as Maurine bustled around the kitchen, juggling several different pots on the stove and a large array of dishes holding everything from fish to crème.

               “Maurine?”

               She whirled around so quickly that she knocked a shaker of salt off the counter. Holland was close enough that he caught it before it hit the floor and shattered, but not before a hefty pinch of it had already spilled, grains scattering across the floor.

               “Oh, good catch!” she gushed, taking the shaker from him with a grin that disappeared when she looked down at the small spill. “Don’t tell Ned about that. He’ll have an utter conniption.”

               Holland found it utterly ridiculous that Ned would get upset over something so small. This must have shown on his face, because when Maurine looked at him next, she quickly clarified:

               “It’s a superstition. Spilling salt is bad luck. And let’s just say Ned is particularly fearful of bad luck at just this time.”

               Hm. Holland wondered if that was because he was here, or because Ned had a lover at sea. Either way, he couldn’t exactly ask, so he nodded simply as Maurine prepared him a plate. When she handed it to him—a creamy mixture of fried rice, flaked, white fish, and egg—she said, “He’ll be happy you’re awake. He’s in the parlor.”

               The fire was already burning, and Ned greeted him through a mouth of food as he walked in. His words were difficult to discern, but Holland assumed they were something along the lines of, “Holland! Did you sleep well?”

               He nodded and sat down opposite him, and had hardly taken one bite of his food before Ned finally swallowed and started in on him. So lively was he that Holland began to question if he truly _had_ dreamt Ned’s endeavors the night previous.

               “Apologies for that, I don’t know how this keeps happening. Kedgeree just does things to my self-control.”

               Holland found it difficult to believe that Ned Tuttle possessed an abundance of self-control in any given situation, food or no food, but he kept this opinion to himself.

               “Now, I wanted to speak to you about lessons and how they will proceed.”

               _Sanct._ He ought to have prepared a decent story for Ned, or at least considered how he would approach the topic of magic. Now that the moment was here, he realized how hopelessly unprepared he was.

               He shoved another bite of food into his mouth to buy himself time, and ended up regretting it. Maurine had peppered breakfast with enough spices to make the eyes water. Not that the pain was unpleasant, but it certainly didn’t improve his ability to speak to Ned.

               “Ordinarily I won’t be up this early. Late nights, you know. I was thinking we could do lessons at three o’clock Monday through Saturday, with Sundays off for the both of us. Unless, of course, you’d prefer we practiced every day.”

               “No,” Holland said, perhaps a bit too quickly. “No. It’s good to have a day of rest. Magic is…taxing on one’s strength.”

               As he said this last bit, Vada walked in. He caught her eye for a brief moment before she sat down next to him, and it left him feeling mysteriously guilty, as though he’d told a lie. Of course, at face value, he hadn’t, but this didn’t mean that he was innocent of furthering Tuttle’s delusions—he had no magic, and therefore no strength to be taxed of. Holland struggled to imagine what kinds of mundane occurrences someone like Ned would define as “taxing.”

               “Oh, I know, trust me,” Ned chuckled confidentially. “Every time I practice any sort of incantation, Maurine has to make extra biscuits. Maurine, isn’t that right?”

               “Hm?” she raised a brow, sitting next to Ned and across from Holland. He felt another stab of pity for her, having to cater to Ned Tuttle and his capricious needs.

               “Curses are the very most difficult, but I don’t do those often. Divination is easiest. Astral travel I’m saving for when I become stronger. Dangerous work, to get stuck outside one’s body.”

               Holland could have throttled him. How utterly orgasmic the idea of being taken outside his body would have seemed when he was under Athos’s knife, or being used as Osaron’s puppet. The flare of his anger quickly fizzled, however, as a rather worrisome idea dawned upon him.

               He hadn’t the faintest idea what cursing had to do with magic. Astral travel and divination were mysteries to him as well. There was the possibility that they were different words for things that were familiar to him, but he doubted that Ned, who worshiped the ground that Kell walked on, would stray from the original terminology if he could afford it. Therefore, Holland now faced the possibility that he would be outed as a fraud not for no longer being Antari…but for knowing nothing about whatever nonsensical “magic” that Tuttle was currently practicing. Sanct, it would have been nice if Kell had given him a better idea of what he was in for before he’d dumped him off here.

               Vada’s face was carefully arranged into a mask, as was Maurine’s. Hm. Did they buy into all of this as much as Tuttle did? If all magic was the same to them, and they doubted Holland’s legitimacy, then why were they being so kind to him? Now _that_ was a mystery.

               “I will…appraise your skill during our first lesson.”

               “Today, yes?” Ned’s eyes were bright with eagerness. Bright enough, Holland hoped, to be blinded to the lack of reciprocation in his. Reluctantly, he agreed that they indeed should start today. Better get it over with and end this thing before he became more attached.

               “Excellent!” Ned clapped. “Now, taking into account food and shelter, name your price for the additional wages we discussed last night.”

               Holland mentally cursed. He had no clue what the money system was like here.

               At his blank stare, Ned prompted, “Say 50 pounds a year?”

               Vada nearly choked on her breakfast, and a loud coughing fit followed. “ _Fifty?_ ”

               Ned gave her a look poisonous enough to shut down the discussion completely, and Holland studied the rug and prayed that Vada would not go wanting because of him. A part of him almost wanted to share the wages with her, but White London survival instincts ran deep, and he couldn’t entirely suppress the urge to hoard it all for himself in case of future hardship.

               After all, his desire to stay alive had been somewhat reanimated, and staying alive required food and shelter. He should probably start planning for that.

*

               Ned, evidently needing something from market, took a cab downtown with Maurine and Holland, who were to buy the latter a wardrobe together. The weather was not much better today than yesterday, but at least the precipitation had stopped. Holland had borrowed a coat from Ned’s closet to face the bitter cold in, this one oddly well fitted to him in comparison to the last clothes he had borrowed from Ned. He wondered how Theo would feel if he knew his lover was lending out his clothing to a fraudulent magical vagabond.

               Was Theo an Enthusiast, like his lover? Holland almost hoped that he didn’t come back from wherever the “land of spices” was, so he at least wouldn’t have to deal with _two_ Neds.

               They left the cab next to a bustling alley of shops whose streets were so full of people that Holland believed trying to get anything larger than a garden wagon through would be nigh impossible. Ned departed with a pep in his step and a hand fluffing his honey-hair, his coat billowing out behind him in the wind, and a promise to meet them back at home in time for lessons.

               Holland swallowed, unexpectedly nervous at his departure. Everyone here walked like a wind-up toy, their backs ramrod straight, their movements calculated. There was none of the fluidity of Red London, the familiar carnivory of White London.

               “You’ll fit in in no time.”

               Maurine had her head tilted at him, a knowing sparkle in her eyes.

               Disarmed, Holland nodded, staring down at his shoes. Those were the last piece of clothing he wore that was still his, and they were stiff after drying while filthy with slush.

               “Shall we?”

               Holland affirmed that they should, and he followed Maurine into the thicket of people.

*

               At the first shop, they had him fitted for shirts and trousers. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done it, but the whole process was remarkably similar to the one in Red London. The tailor’s pins and prodding fingers were unbelievably difficult not to flinch at, but after a few tries, Holland managed to keep still. At the end, Maurine paid, to the shopkeeper’s apparent reproach, though this was contained in a pointed glance that never manifested into words. When the tiny bell at the door signaled their departure, Holland asked what that was about.

               “It would be more conventional,” Maurine muttered barely loud enough for Holland to hear above the noise of the city, “for the man to pay. The shopkeeper knows me…he is probably wondering if you are a relative he did not know about, or a lover.”

               “Probably for the best,” Holland said, testing the waters, “that he assumes the latter.”

               If it was at all possible, Maurine’s spine stiffened even more than it already had been.

               “You’re not wrong.” Her whiskey eyes studied him impenetrably. “It’s dangerous to be an independent woman in London.”

               Holland couldn’t argue with that.

               They then went to a dusty, secondhand shop to get Holland a coat, and Maurine convinced him to get one in a very deep green instead of the black he’d been inclined to. She argued that it brought out his eyes and would brighten his wardrobe. He hadn’t the strength to argue, so out of her pocket went the pounds, and over his arm went the coat. This shop had a less snobbish owner, so Maurine stood watch while Holland changed into his new trousers and one of his new shirts in one of the dressing rooms, throwing Ned’s borrowed clothing into the paper shopping bags.

               When Holland pushed the curtain aside, he found it absurdly difficult to look Maurine in the face. Suddenly, he felt embarrassed. What was he doing here, in this strange London, with these strange clothes, taking charity from a strange family? A part of this might have been the fear that Maurine would smother him with the type of exhausting enthusiasm typical of Ned. However, he need not have worried, as when he summoned the will to raise his eyes, she was giving him the most discreet of smiles, her scar twisting as her eyes crinkled up at the corners.

               Amazingly, Holland found he could have smiled back at her. Sanct. Imagine that. Planning to kill himself yesterday, and already he was nearly smiling. He had the mental resolve of a toddler in front of a plate of sweetbread.

               “Pretty soon,” she drawled as they strolled out of the shop, “you will be far too dashingly dressed to be mistaken for _my_ suitor.”

               As if to punctuate her sentence, a passing lady on the arm of a mutton-chopped man did a double take at Holland, eyeing him coyly under cover of a lace fan.

               Holland blushed, though in hindsight, it was possible that the woman had actually been rubbernecking at Maurine’s scar.

               “Please,” he rolled his eyes, but it was difficult to stop a smirk from tugging one side of his mouth upwards. He ensured that it was the one Maurine couldn’t see.

               They went to a hat shop next, and despite Maurine’s pleas, Holland adamantly refused to purchase any one of the absurd things within its walls. Eventually, she gave up, but they did leave with a pair of thin, white gloves that Maurine assured him served no actual purpose aside from making any outfit seem well put together.

               At their final stop, Holland was fitted for shoes, and they left with one good pair, as well as an armful of several varieties of socks and stockings. He assured Maurine that the pile of undergarments and sleep-dresses she had given him the night previous would be more than enough, and so they departed without purchasing more of those. As much as she was growing on him, Holland was not eager to go undergarment shopping with someone he would have to look in the eye over breakfast. Plus, if she liked women, there would be little opportunity for lewd jokes, and really, that was the only redeemable part of undergarment shopping with an acquaintance.

               A fog was beginning to sweep through the city when they emerged from the shop, and the air hung thick with moisture and the scents of thousands of bodies. Though the crowds were beginning to thin, perhaps in anticipation of a morning rain, Holland still felt more claustrophobic than he was used to in Red or White London, with gloomy grey buildings and hollowed windows rising on both sides of him.

               “Thank you for everything,” he said as they searched for a cab. Holland carried the bulk of the bags, but Maurine’s arms were wrapped around the shoebox, which now held Holland’s old, tattered pair of shoes. “I can’t thank you enough.”

               “Well,” she cut a sidelong glance at him, smirking as devilishly as usual, “in exchange for magic, I’m sure it’s nothing.”

               Holland’s stomach squirmed. “Right.”

               They tromped along on the cobblestones, the stiff leather of Holland’s new shoes rubbing painfully against his feet.

               “So, what is it you _do_ , exactly?” she inquired after a moment.

               Suddenly, the air felt even thicker in Holland’s lungs. While he struggled for words, Maurine elaborated on her question and, unknowingly, saved him a great deal of trouble. “I mean, obviously it’s not _real_ magic.”

               Holland’s head snapped over to her. “Not real—?”

               “Oh, don’t be daft!” Maurine exclaimed so loudly that a pair of ladies from across their street looked over at them. “I love Ned, but I…I don’t believe that these spells he does are real.”

               Holland stopped in his tracks, regarding her intensely.

               “Elaborate.”

               Maurine gave their surroundings a once-around, and then pulled him out of the way, so that they weren’t blocking the pavement.

               “I mean no offense to your…craft.” She inhaled, seemingly steadying herself. “I just don’t believe that when he arranges his crystals in formation, calls upon the elements, burns sage or incense or what have you…that it does anything more than a prayer to God Almighty.”

               Holland knew not what to say, but he certainly knew that the invisibility of Ned’s “magic” was a miracle of tremendous proportions.

               “I hope that I haven’t offended you.” Maurine bowed her head, and a bit of her hair fell into her face. “But I beg your pardon, what even _are_ Red and White London?”

               Holland continued to look at her stupidly.

               “I only want to make sure,” she asserted, with an air of finality, “that a dangerous organization has not just been brought into contact with my family.”

               He nearly laughed, but it came out more of a huff. When he started to walk again, Maurine followed him, and he explained, “Red London and White London aren’t organizations. They are...Londons.”

               “There’s only one London.” The certainty in her voice was amusing. Holland shook his head.

               “There are four Londons. This is Grey London. There is also White, Red, and Black London. Each runs parallel to each other. Like…” he struggled for an example that she would understand, “like twin flames on different candles, standing next to each other. They are all flames, but they all flicker at different times, one might be higher than the other, et cetera. And you certainly wouldn’t call them all a single fire.”

               Maurine scoffed. “Are you certain you aren’t simply getting lost? It’s a big city, I know, and men aren’t the best with maps.”

               “Positive.”

               She was utterly flabbergasted at this declaration.

               “Well, then what makes them so different from our London then? How can you tell the difference?”

               A gentleman with a tall hat and a long beard emerged from the fog just then, walking towards them. Holland waited until he was out of earshot to answer.

               “The level of magic. Grey London is fairly devoid of magic. It’s like, ah…trying to set a wet branch on fire. Magic does not take to it like fire does not take to the branch.”

               “But it can be done,” Maurine interrupted.

               Holland tilted his head from side to side. “If you keep lighting it, eventually it may.” After all, Delilah Bard was a Grey London born Antari, and she had a fire for magic if he had ever seen it.

               “What about the rest?” she inquired.

               “Black London was overtaken by magic,” Holland continued. “Ravaged by the flames. In Red London, magic and people live in harmony. And in White London the people are starving for it.”

               “Like here?”

               “No,” Holland said firmly. “Not at all like here.”

               Eventually, he realized that Maurine was looking at him, a question in her eyes. Holland raised a brow, and she said, “You hail from White London.”

               Holland licked his lips.

               “Yes,” he breathed.

               There was a cab passing that they could have hailed, but they let someone else take it, and continued walking.

               “What was it like?” Maurine seemed to sense that there was something wrong, and her volume had been lowered to match his, her eyebrows knitted together with concern.

               Holland didn’t even consider censoring himself. Somehow, all at once, it was pouring out of him.

               “It was my home,” he said, “but there was no warmth there. I saw my first public execution at nine. They strung his arms wide and they…” Holland swallowed a lump in his throat, unsure why he was grieving for this stranger now, “…they made it take hours. People tried to scoop his blood from the filthy cobblestones to try to get just a shred of magic out of it. Magic,” he explained, “is in blood, you see.”

               At some point, they had stopped walking again.

               “Everyone scars themselves, carving runes into their skins in an attempt to draw more magic to themselves. There is no such thing as a smooth body there, between the capital punishment and the self mutilation. There is no such thing as a conversation or a story. All anyone ever talks about is stories of the someday king that they make up to make themselves feel better about the fact that they are living in misery. But he will never come. White London is a dying world, and it’s unsalvageable even if someone had the means to try.”

               When Holland finished, he was seething, and his pulse pounded in his ears.

               “You talk like…like it’s real.”

               Maurine had gone quite pale, and Holland felt a flash of guilt when he saw that her eyes were shining with tears.

               “Of course it’s real,” he said bitterly. “Magic may not be visible here, but it certainly is real. I know, because I have been its slave.”

               She gasped. “But you are free now, surely!”

               “I…yes, I am free now,” Holland said, well aware of the double meaning, and hoping that she didn’t catch it. “It is real, believe me.”

               “Ned…he said that you lived in a palace.”

               “I did, for most of my life. I was a slave in the White London palace. I only lived in the Red London palace with Kell for a few weeks.”

               A tear traced Maurine’s scar down her cheek. She touched Holland’s arm tenderly.

               “I’m sorry for laughing. If I don’t see something, I just find it hard to…I’ve been lied to on premise of faith before. I now see that magic is no laughing matter.”

               “It’s alright,” Holland said, rather surprised at her tenderness. No one had ever reacted to hearing about his life this way. “It…it is my home, after all. It wasn’t that ba—”

               Maurine smacked him.

               “Not that bad!” she exclaimed. “Don’t turn into a martyr now! It certainly _was_ that bad, and that nightmarish place certainly isn’t your home!” Linking an arm through his, she continued, “We are happy to have you in Grey London. Consider _this_ your home now.”

               Mysteriously, absurdly, Holland didn’t immediately dispel the notion as nonsense. Maurine and all her indignance had him feeling a great deal more comfortable than he had in a long time.

               Together, they hailed a cab, and chatted the bumpy ride home.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> F is for friends who do stuff together. And Maurine seems a good friend...perhaps the first Holland has had in his life! She seems authentic, but what is up with that screaming at night? Why did the old woman react that way to seeing Holland? Moreover, why is Ned so nervous about keeping his luck good lately? And sanct, when will Vada and Holland reconcile? All this and more will be answered in future installments!
> 
> I hope y'all enjoyed this! Lemme know what you thought, and look forward to the first magic lesson in the next chapter (hopefully more than Holland is, lol).


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that this kind of witchcraft is a modern invention, but shhhhhh it makes the story cooler.

               Ned Tuttle’s study, if you could call it that, was so cluttered with all manner of mysterious trinkets that Holland didn’t know where to look first. The setting winter sun managed to sneak through a tiny window in the far right corner of the room, but other than that, the only light was provided by candles. And candles there were.

               Massive candelabras, holding dozens of wicks apiece, stood imposingly in all three other corners of the room. Two massive, wooden bookcases stretched from floor to ceiling against the left wall, but only one of them held books, some bound in tattered animal skin, others so gilded that Holland thought they better served a purpose as mirrors than reading material.

               The other shelf held…miscellany. There were jars upon jars of dark green herbs, salt, sand, dirt, water (both murky and clear), feathers, nuts, thorns, dried flowers, and rice no different from that which they had broken their fast on that morning. There were rows of candles in every color under the sun, different colors of thread, bells both large and small, satchets, tiny glass vials, a few gleaming athames, and crystals of every sort, ranging from a humble seashell to a diamond no larger than a gleam in Holland’s eye.

               When Holland glanced over at Ned, he was covering his mouth with a fist and watching him with big eyes.

               Holland strode over to the door and sealed them both away in the dusty study, and then turned on his heel so that Ned was staring at his back. He wouldn’t lie; it made it easier to feign indifferent, scholarly appraisal when he was wearing brand new clothing that actually fit him, rather than borrowed items of Ned’s. The floor creaked under his new shoes as he approached the large, wooden desk in the center of the room. This was perhaps the most perplexing arrangement of all.

               There were two candles on this desk. One black, in the top left corner, and one white, in the top right. There was a tiny cauldron, cast in iron, a chalice, a bundle of what looked like sage, scorched at the end, several sticks of incense and a holder, a small metal dish, a deck of cards with cryptic pictures on them, a bag of stones with equally cryptic runes on them, a long, smooth stick of wood with a handle at the end, and, finally, something he recognized: one of the elemental boxes that Kell liked to smuggle, with compartments for fire, air, water, earth, and bone. But that was shoved off to the side, almost like it was an afterthought to the utter _clutter_ that dominated the rest of the desk, in the center of which was carved a large circle with a star in the middle.

               “What _is_ all this?” Holland sneered, before he could stop himself.

               Ned dropped his hands to his sides. “What do you mean?”

               Holland covered his tracks as best as he could. “I mean, you’ve gone beyond the means that Kell gave you,” he said, pointing to the elemental box.

               “Magic works differently here.”

               Holland raised a brow.

               “We,” Ned clarified, “have a different lore.”

               “Perhaps it would be easiest if you explained to me what you already know.”

               Ned nodded rapidly. “A great deal, if I may be so bold. Although the results are…sparse.”

               Holland didn’t doubt that. He stepped aside as Ned strode towards the desk.

               “Right,” the latter said. “So, I begin every ritual by gathering whatever ingredients and instruments I need for the spell. I always keep a wand, a chalice, a cauldron, my white and black candles, and,” he retrieved one of the knives from the cluttered shelves, “an athame.

               “Tread the circle thrice about, to keep unwelcome spirits out,” he recited. “I use each of the elements in casting my circle, so two must always be combined. First, I take a broom,” he knelt down and retrieved one from under the desk, “and I sweep in a great circle, counterclockwise, around the desk.”

               He did this, and Holland pondered what in the name of magic it was supposed to be doing.

               “Then, I light some sage, and I wave the smoke in a circle, clockwise.”

               “That is fire?” Holland inquired.

               “No,” Ned replied, “that is air. It also is cleansing, so it keeps bad energy out of the circle.”

               Holland wondered why it was a circle and not a square or an octagon or a dodecagon, but he kept this thought to himself. If he openly questioned the fundamentals of Ned’s idea of magic too much, perhaps Ned would begin to question _his_ actual skill. Kell had always readily demonstrated for him, but Holland didn’t have that capability, and being asked to illustrate why his method was superior could prove disastrous.

               Ned prattled on about how he then mixed water with salt, and splashed it down in a circle, and then, moving clockwise a third time, called upon each of the elements, water, air, fire, earth, and “spirit.”

               “And then,” he said, putting his hands on his hips and turning proudly to Holland, “I begin my spellwork. At the end of it all, I thank all of the elements counterclockwise.”

               Holland had about a million questions, but he settled for the one most obvious to him.

               “You haven’t started the…spell, yet?”

               “Why, no!” Ned exclaimed, grinning broadly. “The spell,” he jingled through his keys for a moment before pulling out a dainty gold one and opening a desk drawer, “comes from here.” He drew out a large, black book, with no markings on the cover or spine. “Sometimes I take spells from the books on the shelves over there, but these are all of my own creation.” He flipped through the pages, as though to illustrate his point. Holland caught a glimpse of the same elegant hand he’d seen in the love letters to Theo, and what looked like personally-drawn illustrations.

               “And do they…work?”

               Ned’s face fell.

               An idea occurred to Holland just then, but for a beat, he hesitated to implement it. The more he pretended to help Ned with his magic, the more deeply deceived the whole household would feel when it came out that Holland probably had even less than him.

               _Sanct, how stupid I’ve become,_ Holland cursed to himself. What was he thinking? Deception was the only way to ensure his safety. He’d been betrayed by his own brother. What reason did he have to trust that this household of strangers had his best interests in mind? Yes, Maurine had been kind to him, but _they_ clearly didn’t trust him with their secrets, so it was probably wise to return the favor.

               “You didn’t use blood,” he pointed out.

               Ned’s head snapped up to look at him. “Pardon?”

               “You didn’t use blood to…cast your circle,” Holland clarified. “The sage was air, the salt water was earth and water, and the athame you channeled the elements through was fire. But there was no blood.”

               Behind Ned’s eyes, his hunger for the touch of magic crackled like a terrible flame.

               “I assumed,” he said slowly, “that it was enough for blood to be present inside of me during the casting.”

               Holland snorted. “Do you think anyone who casts a spell does not have any blood inside of them?”

               “No,” Ned breathed, realization dawning.

               “Hang this ‘spirit’ nonsense,” Holland declared. “Magic is in blood. There is a reason that bone is the hardest element to manipulate. If you want to call upon the elements, ensure it is not left out of your register.”

               Ned swallowed. “I’m afraid,” he said, twiddling his thumbs, “I’m afraid I have always been a bit squeamish.”

               He looked like a lost puppy. Holland did his best not to sneer as he replied.

               “Regrettably, I must inform you that magic is not for the faint of heart.”

               “I’m not faint of—”

               “Oh _, sanct!”_ Holland swore, then clenched a fist, trying to rein himself in. “Ned, I need you to understand something very clearly.” He took a step towards him, grateful for the few inches he had over him in height. “Magic is not to be taken lightly. It can take on a life of its own, become _oshoc._ I have seen what that looks like. I have been its slave. Magic is the cruelest of masters, and it is always hungry. If you let it, it will consume you, body and soul. If you swoon at the sight of blood, we must stop here, because this is too much for you.”

               Holland had allowed himself to rant a bit in the hopes that he could convince Ned to give up his quest here and now, but he shouldn’t have given him that much credit. The fool’s eyes had only grown brighter with excitement as he’d spoken. Slavery meant nothing to this sheltered pup. It was only another exciting adventure, to face the possibility of having his body and will stolen from him. Holland’s stomach roiled with disgust and fury.

               “I can handle it,” Ned nodded, as eager a pupil as ever. “Please, I can get used to it.”

               Holland didn’t bother trying to hide his sneer.

               “So practice,” he said. “Practice drawing your own blood, until it no longer fazes you.”

               Unable to look at Ned a moment longer, he swept out of the room, slamming the door on magic for the day.

*

               He tried to slip out the front door without anyone noticing, but Vada stepped inside the foyer just as Holland was shrugging on his new coat. He did his best to move out of her way, but she swerved the same way that he did, and then did it again to the other side. The situation might have been comical, if she hadn’t been taking such great measures to avoid looking him in the face. Finally, she placed a hand on his chest and shoved him against the wall, slipping past him in the small space. Before Holland attempted to catch his breath, he craned his neck around the corner to watch her leave, but she had already gone. He slumped back against the wall, his heart pounding.

               Right. It didn’t matter. He ought not to be reacting like this to the touch of someone who hated him. Forcing himself to interpret his rapid pulse as irritation, he threw the door open and stepped onto the front landing, only to be surprised when a rather large snowflake landed on his nose.

Holland looked up at the sky with wonder. Flakes of snow in clusters as big as his thumb were floating down from the sky at the gentlest of paces, not overeager to add to the London slush once they hit the streets.

               Though his ears were already getting cold, he didn’t care. Holland made a point to memorize Ned’s address, which was carved into a tiny silver plate by the door, and then set off in no particular direction. He needed to walk. He needed to think, and the Grey London air was as clear as it was ever going to be. Since he’d been out shopping with Maurine, all of the fog had dissipated, and though there was still the ever-lingering stench of human filth and trash in the air, the crisp cold made it a little less noticeable.

               Holland shoved his hands in his pockets as he stalked through the neighborhood. He doubted that Ned was in the wealthiest sector of the city, but given the fact that they were each eating entire meat pies for dinner, they couldn’t exactly be the worst off, either. As Holland walked, he saw ladies with big hats and gloves with bows on them, rowdy, young bachelors who laughed loud enough to overcome the hush of the snow, children who threw snowballs (one of which knocked a lady’s hat off), and young couples holding each other at a proprietary distance. There were stray cats, obese grey pigeons who could scarcely fly, and horse-drawn carriages moving at what Holland thought had to be a dangerous pace.

               Could this place be a home, like Maurine had said? He wanted to accept her comfort so badly that it ached, but how could he? When the people who were supposed to love you the most in the world threw you to the wolves, how could you expect any better treatment from _anyone_ else? Holland’s baseline was anguish, and he didn’t know if he trusted himself to rise above it. It felt good to smile, but if he allowed himself to feel safe, how much worse would he feel when it was inevitably swept out from under him? And it _would_ be swept out from under him. It always was.

               For whatever reason, the thought made Holland angry. Nay, _furious._

               Didn’t he deserve a break? Maybe it was narcissistic, maybe it was entitled, but Holland didn’t care. People like Kell got to walk around being both of those things, and they never thought twice about it. Why was it always pain for Holland, and pleasure for Kell?

               What if he hadn’t deserved it all? Osaron, Astrid and Athos. The betrayals, the torture, the agonies of slavery.

               But then, that was almost too horrible to believe. If he didn’t deserve it, then the world had put him through it all at random. And if it was random, it could very well go on indefinitely. Better to believe that the world was just, and he was evil. It was easier to wrap his head around than randomness.

               Holland had hardly realized, so deep in thought was he, but the sun had now fully disappeared behind the horizon. The oil lamps on the streets were glowing yellow, and the snow was still steadily falling, blanketing the streets in white. He was quite far from Ned’s house, now. These houses were smaller, and the streets smelled worse. Still, the they were lively, and he was enjoying watching the people, despite the likelihood that they were judging him mercilessly.

               “Ho there! Green gentleman!”

               Holland ignored the call, and trudged on through the snow.

               “I say, green gentleman, hello!”

               Irritation flaring, Holland turned to see a man with tan skin, dark eyes, and an armful of loose papers jogging across the street towards him, completely oblivious to a horse-drawn carriage that was flying down the lane with no signs of stopping.

               “Look out!” Without thinking, Holland dove in front of it, colliding with the man and pushing him out of harm’s way and into the snow. The carriage thundered past as they hit the ground, and Holland’s mouth filled with the taste of iron. Around them, the man’s papers fluttered to a rest in a similar fashion to the falling snow. He heard the shrill gasp of a lady from the other side of the street, followed by a masculine exclamation. When he glanced up, he saw a man picking up a swooning woman out of the snow, and a small crowd gathering around them. In fact, passerby seemed to be more concerned with her well-being than with that of the two of them who were actually lying in the street.

               “By God, you’ve saved my life!”

               Holland stood up without looking at the other man, his ears ringing. He spat out a mouthful of blood into the snow, wincing at the throbbing in his mouth. Evidently, he’d bitten his tongue. Fantastic. Maurine’s food was about to become a great deal less enjoyable.

               Without a word, he retreated from the scene, taking care not to look in the direction of the gawkers surrounding the fainting lady.

               “I say, sir! Sir, please wait!”

               Sanct, why was everyone in this London so persistent? For a bunch of uptight socialites, they sure didn’t know how to take a hint.

               “Sir, by God, please, you must allow me to properly thank you.” The man’s voice and his footfalls grew louder behind Holland until the latter had no choice but to face him…only in time to see him slip and nearly fall flat on his face in the slush. Holland caught him on one arm, and the man looked up at him, beaming a gap-toothed smile brighter than the oil lamp they stood under.

               “You truly are heaven sent, sir. My hat’s off to—” He paused, feeling around his head. “Ah, well it seems I’ve lost my hat. Please, sir, I’m Benton. Alexander Benton, but you may call me Alex.”

               He transferred his soaking stack of papers to one arm, holding out a shockingly thin hand. Holland took it, and it was even colder than his own.

               “Holland.” He shook it gently, almost afraid that it would break. “Holland Vosjik.” His eyes traveled to downwards, to Alex’s papers. “What have you there?”

               “Ah,” Alex chuckled breathily, pushing back a long lock of hair, “they’re poems, I’m afraid. I had been hoping to sell one to you.”

               Holland started to turn away. “I don’t have any money.”

               Alex tilted his head, his eyes flicking from Holland’s torso back up to his face.

               Holland rolled his eyes. “The last of it is spent on the new clothes.”

               “Oh,” Alex looked at the ground, “forgive me.” He straightened up again, then held out one of the sopping things and said, “Please, then, take one on the house.”

               Holland started to walk away. “Better that you feed your family.”

               Alex, the fool, trotted after him. “Oh, no, I insist! This is Christmas money, mere Christmas money, and what is Christmas for if not for giving, especially to guardian angels?”

               Holland hadn’t the faintest clue what an angel was, but he wasn’t about to ask.

               “There are a thousand people here for you to give your poems to.”

               “Yes,” Alex was walking alongside him now, “but you look the poetic sort.”

               He snorted at that one.

               “I am not even a person, much less a poet.”

               That made Alex stop in his tracks, but not for long.

               “Yes, ah, well,” he rapidly caught up to Holland, “that’s valid. A great many poets I know would scarcely describe themselves as people. But one does not need to be a person to be a writer.”

               Holland shivered, and did his best to avoid Alex’s warm gaze. He’d already established that he didn’t have money, but this man could still very well steal his new coat and clothing. He tensed himself up, ready to be dragged into an alleyway and fought.

               “Let me buy you a drink,” Alex said suddenly, and the geniality, the casual warmth in his tone was so disarming that Holland halted in his tracks. Alex must have took that to be encouraging, because he continued, “Hang the poems. You deserve something for what you did for me. And you’re shivering.”

               Slowly, Holland turned to face him. The snow swirled around them in needlelike flakes, finer and more abrasive than the larger clusters that had been falling earlier. He swallowed a mouthful of blood, which did not escape Alex’s notice.

               “Oh, the alcohol might hurt that,” he conceded. “But the good cheer won’t! My colleague, Stella is meeting me at The White Owl at six o’ clock. We can all warm up with a bit of beer.”

               Holland studied Alex’s face. Even if he had good intentions, good intentions didn’t always mean a lack of harm. He would definitely have rather gone home and buried under the covers than gone out with this gap-toothed poet. Plus, there was the very real danger of getting lost in London in the middle of a snowstorm, with no money. Or coming back home at a time when Ned had forbidden him from setting foot downstairs…

               But then, there were always the windows.

               “You are far too young for me,” Holland finally said, a last ditch effort to cling to his misery.

               Alex laughed at that so loudly it echoed down the street. He clapped a hand on Holland’s back, as though they were old friends, and Holland flinched, a little skittish, but reassured by the look on Alex’s face.

               “There is no age in a pub, my friend!” he proclaimed.

               And just like that, Holland found himself strolling down the streets of London, with his first ever friend, trying to arrange his face in such a way as not to reveal the way that that made him feel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heaven help me, I'd wanted to get the Christmas chapter up before uhhhh actual Christmas but that definitely won't happen. There's three chapters till then, maybe more. Plus, I've just discovered I need to cut (drumroll please) 17000 words out of my novel! Woo (pull the trigger, piglet)! I'm also revising a short story AND I'm an English major doing finals and who needs to celebrate Christmas on her own so...updates will take a little longer than usual. I'm a stubborn b*tch and I definitely know where this is all going, have an outline and everything, but please bear with me if you're enjoying this and know I'm not abandoning it. The novel does come first, though.
> 
> Are y'all excited to meet Stella? Agh, and how about this Alex fellow? Will Holland and Vada reconcile soon? What will Holland do when he gets back to the house so late? All this and more will be addressed in the coming installments.
> 
> Oh...and Holland has his first friend. Cry with me.


	8. Chapter 8

               The White Owl was not at all like the pub Holland had met Ned in. For one thing, there were people in it that were smiling, not to mention more people in general. He and Alex stomped the snow off their shoes at the door, and the heat from the hearth in the back corner melted the rest off their coats and hair. Holland hadn’t the faintest clue how they were going to find an open table, but Alex weaved through the throng of bodies like he knew where he was going, and sure enough, they reached a table with three chairs, two of which were unoccupied. The third held a woman with hair even whiter than Holland’s, but lengthy dark eyelashes that she watched him shyly under. It struck Holland that this was the first time he’d seen a woman alone since he’d arrived in Grey London.

               “Been playing with dye?” she raised a perfect brow, drumming a finger against a half-finished pint.

               “Don’t listen to her.” Alex put a hand on his arm, then rounded on her. “She ought to be more polite to the man I owe my life.”

               She scoffed and leaned back in her chair with a creak. “Stopped someone from knocking his teeth in for his incessant solicitation, I assume?”

               “Wrong again,” Holland quipped pleasantly, taking his seat. “Though the solicitation was a part of it.”

               “Oh?”

               “He ran in front of a carriage to sell me a poem.”

               She threw her head back and positively cackled, and Alex tugged at his collar.

               “And now he’s buying you a drink.” She turned to Alex. “You know, for most, a simple pick up line will do.”

               Holland’s face felt hot, but he was certain it wasn’t as red as Alex’s. The latter waved down a pair of pints for them.

               “Stella.” She held out a perfectly manicured hand to Holland. A bit emboldened by the number of people whose eyes had lingered on him that day, and cheered by his company, he took it tenderly and kissed it. Alex’s jaw fell open, and Holland tried not to smile while Stella laughed at his expense again. Distantly, Holland wondered why the name sounded so bloody familiar. Certainly, Alex’s did to that of his dead brother, though Holland wasn’t sure if the draw he felt to Alex was entirely brotherly.

               “Holland,” he returned the introduction, and Alex continued to sputter. Eventually, he rounded on Holland, who was shocked to find that there was real fear in his eyes. A similar fear, he realized, that had been in Ned’s eyes when Holland had found his letters to Theo. _That_ was where he’d heard the name Stella. Perhaps after they’d all had a bit more to drink, he could inquire in that direction.

               “I…” Alex’s eyes were darting around, searching for an escape. “I…am so…I’d thought. The green coat…”

               “It’s green _carnations_ , you delightful buffoon,” Stella said. “For someone who takes lovers at the rate you do, you sure are bad at this.”

               Finally, Holland had had enough.

               “Is it truly forbidden here?” he blurted.

               Stella’s face went suspiciously blank. “What?”

               He rolled his eyes and lowered his voice, though he needn’t have, as the gentlemen at the table behind them were holding hands, and all other persons near them were involved in such riotous conversation that they would likely only have heard if Holland had started screaming.

               “Two men. Two women.”

               Alex’s panic was steadily draining from his face, to be replaced with intrigue.

               “Where do you come from, exactly, that it isn’t?”

               Holland sighed, taking a hearty sip of his beer. The alcohol burned his tongue viciously, but it warmed his insides. “Somewhere far away.”

               “Ah, don’t give me that!” He pointed a finger at Holland. “You just want to keep it to yourself, is what this is.”

               Holland studied his lips coolly. “Something like that.”

               Alex’s face went red again, and he gave Holland a hearty pat on the back.

               “Keep drinking. We’ll get it out of you eventually. And then, I will personally sail us there.”

               Stella leaned in confidentially. “The heaviest thing he can lift is a well of ink.”

               Perhaps that was true, but Holland had already proved he could lift Alex just fine.

*

               After a number of pints on Alex’s coin, they were chatting like old friends.

               “I hope,” Alex pointed a wavy finger at Stella, “that you are enjoying your Christmas present.”

               Stella’s kohl-lined eyes widened. “Tell me that this isn’t your Christmas money!”

               “I’m a poet, love.” He punctuated this with a wink at Holland. “Any money I can salvage is Christmas money.”

               Holland hoped that his confusion was not as dominant on his face as it was in his mind, but Alex, even inebriated, did not miss it. He cocked his head to the side, studying him.

               “ _No_ ,” he gasped.

               “Afraid so,” Holland said.

               Confusion was written on Stella’s face now, too, though hers was of a different breed. She looked from Alex to Holland to Alex again, and Holland watched as her eyes lit up with the realization of what was happening.

               “No,” she echoed, leaning in towards Holland, who took a sip of beer. “Really?”

               Holland swallowed and rolled his eyes. “Yes, really. Enlighten me. What is it?”

               Alex nearly spit out his beer laughing, and Stella was pulled into it. Holland could only sit there and observe the violent spasms their joy sent through their bodies, wondering if he was supposed to smile, or laugh along, or remain silent. Even when he’d been with Kell at the palace, the wounds that Osaron had left had been fresh, so the only laughter he’d heard had been from Rhy and Alucard’s chambers by night. Grey London was dismal, yes, but Holland was willing to bet that there was more laughter in this singular pub than in the whole of White London. Even then, most laughter in White London centered around the public executions, if someone squirmed in a particularly unusual way after being disemboweled. This was…innocent. A mirthful chuckle at the ignorance of a friend.

               When they finally finished, Alex wiped a tear from his eye. “Oh, Holland, I am sorry.”

               “You truly do come from afar,” Stella marveled, wiping smudged makeup from her cheeks. “To not know what Christmas is!”

               “Perhaps he is of another faith,” Alex theorized, raising his brows at Holland, who was well aware he was in dangerous territory.

               This idea appeared to intrigue Stella.

               “It is no issue to us if you are,” she informed him. “In fact, Alex and I are quite critical of the Christian doctri—”

               “I don’t know what that is.” The alcohol emboldened Holland to tell the truth. “I know nothing of Christianity or—” He struggled to recall the other word— “Christmas.”

               Alex almost dissolved into another fit of giggles, but Stella hushed him. “Now, we’ve teased him enough.” She turned to Holland, and he was surprised to see that her pupils were not nearly as huge with drink as his were. Perhaps it was simply because his irises were darker, but her demeanor was not that of someone as far gone as Alex.

               Yet curiously, she’d begun drinking before they had. Holland smirked, amused.

               “Christmas,” she explained, “is a Christian celebration that takes place on December the twenty-fifth, to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.”

               The name did not arouse any kind of reaction from Holland, and she appeared nearly offended by this.

               “Still nothing?”

               “Who is Jesus Christ?”

               “The messiah!” Alex crowed, lifting his glass high in the air. A nearby table of gentlemen lifted theirs as well, hurrahing energetically.

               Stella rolled her eyes. “To Christians, he is the messiah.”

               “Why?” Holland asked.

               “Well, because he is the son of God.”

               Holland blinked.

               “ _Still_ nothing?” She was now genuinely incredulous. When Holland shook his head, she gave their surroundings a furtive glance. “You must,” she leaned in, “be careful who you ask these questions. God is the creator. The God who put us here.”

               “Allegedly,” Alex slurred, leaning into Holland a bit. He was thin as a bird, perhaps even more bony than Holland himself was.

               “Don’t repeat that,” Stella deadpanned to Holland. “He created humanity and all things good. Jesus Christ is his son, who died for our sins. Legend has it He will one day return.”

               “Not everyone believes that,” Alex muttered into Holland’s shoulder. _One day return._ That sounded familiar.

               Stella acknowledged Alex’s point with a nod and a shrug. “We celebrate Christmas to celebrate the birth of Christ. We put presents under a tree and make mince pies and yule logs.”

               “Kiss under mistletoe.” Alex’s hand found Holland’s thigh, and the latter’s stomach swooped.

               “That’s it, I’m ordering you a pie.” Stella excused herself briefly, and Holland, flustered though he was, tried to maintain some degree of propriety with Alex. When she returned and Alex reluctantly dug into his food, Holland said cautiously:

               “We have something similar where I am from. A legend of a Someday King.”

               “And where is that?”

               Holland shook his head, his stomach suddenly squirming at thoughts of public executions and Alox, turned to stone, crumbling to dust.

               “Somewhere dead.”

               Stella appeared to have no response to this, so she and he sipped their beers while Alex ate. Eventually, another question surfaced in Holland’s mind, foggy as it was, and he could not suppress its urgency.

               “You are the first woman here whom I have ever seen without a chaperone.”

               She glanced pointedly at Alex.

               “Yes,” Holland said, “but you were here alone before he came. And you just ordered him food on your own.”

               She smirked. “I suppose I have not been indoctrinated into subservience the same way most women are.”

               “How did you avoid it?”

               Her delicate lips fell open, and her eyes focused on nothing in particular as she thought.

               “The education is a part of it. Going to school with Alexander has helped me to develop my mind in a way that allows me to see through the lies most women are fed since birth.”

               _Alexander._ Holland preferred the sound of that to ‘Alex.’ It reminded him nothing of home. It was exotic and mighty, an intriguing contrast to the waifish writer it belonged to.

               “Do most women not go to school?” Holland found the gender differences of this London both disturbing and perplexing.

               “None do,” she said quietly, and before Holland could ask about this further, she clarified, “The school believes that I am a man.”

               Alex, who was beginning to sober up at this point, stiffened.

               It was Holland’s turn to have his jaw fall open. Stella laughed.

               “Ridiculous, isn’t it? They even call me by a different name.”

               “ _Why?”_ Holland asked. “What possible benefit can that serve?”

               “God,” she rolled her eyes. “Allegedly. The same reason that if we were in another bar tonight, Alex would get arrested for touching you like that.”

               Alex raised his fork in a toast-like motion.

               Holland was speechless, and Stella leaned back in her chair, appraising him.

               “Are you so sure this place that you’re from cannot be resuscitated? Because if it can, I would like to go there.”

               He sighed, taking another sip of his beer. “It’s beyond saving.”

               Alex made a noise. “Shame.”

               “Damned shame.” Stella raised her glass. “To no shame.”

               Alex raised his. “To defying God.”

               Holland’s was the last glass to clink with the triad. He glanced at the stack of paper still sitting next to Alex. “To poetry.”

*

               It was still snowing by the time they stumbled outside. Holland, after growing uncomfortable with how muddled his head was becoming, had helped Alex to finish his pie, and even Stella, who appeared unbothered by the amount of alcohol she had downed, had taken a few bites. It compared nothing to the works of Maurine.

               Even in his new shoes, Holland’s toes were near frozen after a few minutes of trekking through the undisturbed snow. He would have to remember to start wearing two pairs of socks on days like this. Alex picked up on this and offered Holland his scarf. After repeated refusals, he stopped asking for permission and draped it around his shoulders. Holland bit back a smile, secretly happy that he had. Charming little artist, this one. White London artists had only ever depicted the Someday King, and even then, art rarely survived much longer than its maker. What did Alex write about? He voiced this question, and when Alex replied, it took Holland a moment to realize that the puff of vapor escaping his lips was not his breath, but a cloud of nasty smelling smoke.

               “Death,” he took a drag on a tiny, paper-wrapped stick, and an ember glowed at the end. “Isolation. Ecstasy. Rancor. Really, whatever I’m feeling that day.”

               Stella’s snort was so ugly that Holland was impressed she would dare utter it on the street.

               “Please!” She had long given up hiking up her skirt to keep it out of the snow. “You and I know full well that we write whatever will keep us on the faculty’s good side.”

               “Who said that we were talking about my classwork?”

               “I did, as that’s the only time when you write. Outside of class you prefer talking about writing to the actual act.”

               He high-kneed through the snow and blew smoke down her neck.

               “That is a disgusting habit.”

               “I like it,” Holland said, and then mentally slapped himself. He wasn’t sober enough to keep his mouth shut, but he _was_ sober enough to regret what came out of it.

               Alex waited for him to catch up and put an arm around him. “Holland, love, you must join us at the academy. Write with me. I need someone to stand up for me when she decides to bully me.”

               Though Alex was still not the man he’d been before alcohol had touched his tongue, and therefore probably hadn’t meant the suggestion, Holland found himself picturing himself, if only for a fleeting second, in that role. The image was foggy, unrealized; the only thing he’d ever created was when he’d turned his brother to stone.

               “I wouldn’t know how to begin,” he said, and cursed his honesty. He was _never_ drinking again.

               “What, no poetry in the land of homosexuality and godlessness?” Alex cast him a crooked grin. “Ah, don’t worry. There really is nothing to learn in poetry, I’m afraid. It either is good, or it isn’t. Yes, you can improve your vocabulary, but for the most part these classes Stella and I are in are about signaling to the rest how superior your taste is. It’s unlike prose in that it is as incoherent as an emotion. A poem does not necessarily convey meaning, but allows a reader to experience what the writer is feeling at the moment. Cathartic and agonizing. You’ll never meet a more troubled group than poets.”

               Holland had no clue why he felt so comforted by this statement.

               “I’ve never even read a poem.”

               Alex looked at him, a decision happening behind his dark eyes.

               “I can read you some tonight, if you like.”

               Holland could neither offer a yes or a no before Stella turned around ahead of them and inquired as to where they were walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooo hi. It's been a while. I was actually debating dropping this fic completely, but then I looked in my inbox and was shocked to find new comments from people saying they really like it??? So I'm more motivated to continue now. Updates will still take a little while to come out, because I have a lot of writing to get done for my classes and I have other obligations which must come first, but I hope everyone is doing alright and enjoying the story thus far. Wonder what'll happen with Holland and Alex! And it's awfully late at night for them to be coming back to Holland's place...


	9. Chapter 9

               Holland’s stomach plummeted. In his drunken stupor, he’d forgotten all about Ned. He had seen Stella draw out a dinted pocketwatch once during the night, but he didn’t need to ask her to check it again to know that it was well past ten. Getting past Ned, Maurine, and Vada was going to be a job. No matter how hard he worked his brain, he couldn’t think of a single way from the door to the stairs without being seen. At least, without magic. For the first time, he almost missed it.

               Perhaps he could go home with Alex or Stella, but without an invitation, he certainly wasn’t going to ask. Sanct, he should have done a better job of flirting back. Though he couldn’t even _think_ about what would have followed if he had stayed the night with Alexander, it would at least have saved him from whatever unholy lecture he was going to receive upon his return.

               There may have been other places to go and drink the rest of the night away, but Holland was not aware of them for obvious reasons. Plus, if anyone was going to participate in that sort of thing, it was Stella or Alex, and they had both gone tellingly silent. The poets, it appeared, needed their sleep.

               “I ought to be getting back,” he finally said, earning him a too-quick “yes, of course!” and a polite lamentation that the night was still young. After a moment of struggle, he recalled the address, but was then abashed to realize that he did not know which direction that was in. Alex immediately declared that he knew the way, and veered a sharp right at the next alleyway, at which point Stella quickly intervened, steering the both of them in the precise opposite direction while mumbling something of “dandies” and incompetence.

               Holland’s feet were numb and his nose was running by the time they reached Ned’s house. He had shunned all luxuries during his stay at the Red London palace, but just a few days under Maurine’s care had already turned him soft. Like a fool, he was setting himself up to be hurt again. Maybe that was all he knew how to do.

               Alex’s pretty jaw was on the ground. He turned to Holland with glee in his eyes.

               “You live with _Ned?_ ” he inquired.

               There was a bit of an edge to his voice that Holland took an unplaceable satisfaction in.

               “Yes,” he answered, then looked at Stella. “I know you know…Theo.”

               She smiled. “Ah, Theo. Off exploring the wilds of India. I told him he had better bring me back a tiger pelt. And perhaps some spices to make the school food edible.”

               Alex was giving him a very strange look indeed. When they fell into silence, Holland made no move towards the front door. He was suddenly terrified of being yelled at by Ned in front of his new acquaintances. Or, Sanct forbid, interrupting whatever ghastly ritual they did to produce those nightly screams.

               “Right,” he said, as the snow drifted down and a rather nightmarish plan hatched in his drunken brain. There simply was no way around it. “It was wonderful meeting you all.” He marched over to the overhang by the front porch and, grasping it with his bare hands, hoisted himself up. Had every muscle in his body not been straining, he might have laughed at Alex and Stella’s reactions.

               “HOLLAND!”

               “BY GOD!”

               “ _Shh_ ,” Holland hushed them violently once he was perched on the overhang, balancing precariously on its point, looking like some horrible, grotesque statue from the White Twins’ gardens.

               “I daresay I underestimated how much the liquor affected you, friend. Come down, please.” Alex held out a gloved hand, though he was more than a foot out of reach.

               “Look,” Holland said, “it’s a long story, but I can’t use the front door.”

               “…Why not?”

               “Because…” Sanct. If it weren’t for the alcohol, he would have had a beautiful excuse ready. “Because Ned told me not to.”

               Even from this height, he could see Alex’s expression darken.

               “Is it that kind of arrangement, then?”

               Holland, like the utter simpleton he apparently was, replied:

               “What kind of arrangement?”

               Alex started to walk away, but froze in his tracks when Stella, bless her heart and everything she was, held her hands up to Holland. When Alex asked her what she was doing, she replied, as her feet lifted off the ground, that it certainly wasn’t what he was thinking, that Ned would never do that to Theo, and that she was not going to let Holland climb to the rooftop all by himself.

               “We’ll be ruined by morning,” Alex muttered as Stella and Holland used his scarf to pull him up, which made a dangerous tearing noise halfway. When his shoes finally found purchase on the shingles, he pointed a finger at Stella’s chest. “If I die unpublished, I’ll haunt you to the ends of the Earth.”

               Offended that the insult was not extended to him, Holland began planning their next movement. They would need to get away from the main street as soon as possible, if they were to avoid being seen. It would be best if the majority of their climbing took place on the rooftop which connected them to the neighbors. However, to reach that section of roof, they would need to find a way to scale the front of the house horizontally for a good five feet, using only a half-inch ledge as a foothold and brick and mortar as handgrips.

               “Holland?” Stella hissed, her eyes wide as he set one foot on the ledge to his left. It was slippery with ice and snow. “ _Holland?”_

               Holland nearly lost his footing, and all of them gasped in unison so loudly that, had Holland not been so focused on digging his nails into the frozen brick, he would have seen a light turn on across the street. Stella and Alex, of course, did not miss it.

               “This is absurd,” Alex said. “Why can’t you use the front door?”

               “I’ll explain when I’m trying not to die.” Holland was gritting his teeth so hard that his jaw hardly allowed the words to escape.

               “My scarf has already ripped. I’m not going to—” Alex started to say, and Holland, in a panic, interrupted him.

               “When I arrived here, Ned gave me strict directions never to come downstairs at night, alright?” It was hard to maintain Alex’s gaze, so he quickly turned back to facing the wall. However, even in the snowy darkness, in that brief amount of time their eyes met, he could see the calculation happening behind them: _Why would he do that?_

               Holland didn’t expect them to stay after this confession. This whole thing had “scandal” written all over it and, though they might have been polite about it thus far, the alcohol was quickly wearing off, as was the novelty of the expedition.

               However, he must have underestimated how much curiosity drives a poet, because Stella stepped out onto the ledge after him, her skirt billowing in the open air.

               After a few harrowing minutes of inching along the ledge, Holland and Stella heaved themselves onto the rooftop one floor up. It was a dreadful reach, and for a brief, panicked second, Holland began to wonder if he was going to have to tell Alex, the last on the ledge, to go back the way he’d come, but in the end he’d managed it despite the screaming of his arm muscles, and he’d even had enough strength to help Stella and then Alex up.

               “The Ripper himself covets our stealth,” Stella rhymed, treading carefully on the sloped, snowy rooftop, and Alex snapped his fingers in what must have been a positive appraisal.

               From there, making their way up to the landing of Holland’s third floor window went smoothly enough. In a brief moment of terror, Alex lost his footing and carved a line through the powdery snow as he plummeted from the third floor roof to the one below it. Though he was adamant about communicating his pain to them, he’d been able to follow them back up to the third floor, and Holland had thanked God, Jesus, and whatever other deities Gray London had to offer that he hadn’t crashed through the ceiling. He could only pray that the snow would cover their tracks by morning, otherwise he imagined the prints on the rooftop would tell a scandalizing story indeed.

               Finally, they were standing on the narrow ledge in front of Holland’s window, facing the street once more. Then, shivering, numb, and with their toes aching, they encountered their greatest trouble thus far. When Holland tried to lift the window with frozen fingers, it remained immobile, and not in the sort of way that a window frozen shut would. The heat rising to his face, he threw as much of his weight on it as he could without losing his footing, but it hardly budged. Unless they broke it, which would surely land him in more trouble with Ned than simply walking in through the front door, they were trapped outside.

               He wanted to apologize, but even the notion sounded shallow. He couldn’t begin to think of what he might say, so great was his shame.

               “Well damn,” said Alex, his thin legs trembling with effort. “What now?”

               It was at this time that Stella, carefully balanced with a hand on the gutter above them, hitched up her skirt ever so slightly and unsheathed a magnificent knife from within her boot.

               “If this,” she held it not an inch from Holland’s nose, “gets scratched or broken, you’re buying me a new one.”

               “I’ll be damned,” Alex said as she slipped the blade beneath the window and began jiggling it. “I hadn’t realized we had the Ripper herself with us tonight.” He looked to Holland with a grin, but his confusion must have shown on his face, because he shook the comment off with a quick “nevermind.”

               With a _click_ more beautiful than any music Holland had ever heard, the latch caught, and the window slid open. Stella retracted the knife, and when Holland caught her gaze, she said solemnly, “Women like me have to protect ourselves.”

               Her sobriety towards violence was disarming. It was a nice break from the pleasure Bard had taken in it. That had always irked him about her.

               “After you.”

               It felt strange to be on flat ground after standing on a slippery incline all night, and what alcohol was left in his system made the transition even stranger. Stella followed him inside, then Alex, who shut the window once more, leaving them dripping snow onto the hardwood, their freezing hands prickly in the sudden warmth.

               For a moment, Alex and Stella observed his newly-acquired quarters, and then the two of them burst out laughing, sliding into hysteria like Alex had slid down the roof. Holland watched them in fascination for a few beats before he remembered himself and hushed them both. Stella, wiping a tear from her eye, put her hand on his shoulder, and his flinch was enough to sober her completely.

               “Well,” Alex said, “now I’ve seen everything. The angry drunk. The gluttonous drunk. The drunk of easy virtue. And now the _climbing drunk._ ”

               Holland lowered his voice, hoping to set an example. “Ned truly did forbid me from going downstairs.”

               Before Alex could ask why, a blood-curdling scream rattled the entire frame of the house, and his eyes widened.

               There was a ringing silence, and then, the tender sounds of weeping. To Holland’s horror, Stella was immediately at the door.

               “You can’t do that,” he ordered.

               She turned back to him and arched a brow. For the first time, he did not see a bit of amicability in her form. There was only defiance as she clutched the doorknob like Astrid clutched a whip.

               “Oh?”

               Holland thought back to his encounter with Vada, and started to backtrack, stumbling over his words.

               “I’m not in on it!” he said, then cursed himself. “I…I mean I don’t know what _it_ is. Ned simply forbid me from going downstairs whenever he—”

               “So these screams have been happening every night?” Stella asked, thunderstruck. “And you’d never thought to investigate?”

               Heat flooded Holland’s face, and Alex rushed to his defense.

               “I sincerely doubt Ned would ever hurt anyone.”

               Holland’s hair stood up at the look of doubt on Stella’s face. She had been the one mentioned in the letter. She knew him better.

               “I’m going to make sure she’s alright,” she said.

               Holland, experiencing a resurgence in his early fear of Ned, grabbed for her wrist, but his fingers closed on empty air. He and Alex dashed after her as quietly as they could, whisper-calling her name as she rounded the bannister and disappeared down the stairs.

               Alex finally managed to loop his arms around her waist halfway down the final flight, but it was clear the damage had already been done; there was not a whisper to be heard on the first floor, as though the entire house was holding its breath for them.

               None of the three of them dared to move a muscle. At least, not until Stella pried herself loose from Alex’s grip and began to tiptoe towards the dining-room doorway. Holland slipped past Alex and followed her, if only because he might be able to hold her back more effectively than the scrawny poet. Unbeknownst to him, said poet followed him as well, and would also bear witness to the chaos that was about to transpire.

               Everything happened in the blink of an eye, but Holland’s had always been sharp. Stella had hardly peeked her head around the doorframe when a match was struck directly in front of her, illuminating in the darkness a drawn and withered face whose eyes crinkled at the corners when they recognized her. Behind her, Ned, Maurine, and two young men Holland did not know were holding hands at the dining table, surrounded by several tall, unlit candles, smoking as though they had just been blown out.

              “Charity?”

              Ned’s eyes rose to see Stella’s face in the doorframe, and they grew wide.

              “My Charity?” the woman reached out, and before Stella could step back, she had touched her shoulder. “It _is_ you!”

              The match went out, and four chairs pushed back at once as they were plunged into blackness.

              “No!” Ned shouted. Several things, possibly the candlesticks, clattered to the ground as he sprinted for the woman. Holland shoved Alex back towards the stairs, but he could not reach Stella, who had already bolted for the front door.

               “Mother!” one of the boys called.

               “I touched her,” the old woman sobbed. “It really is you, Charity.”

               “It isn’t her!” Ned was screaming in a way Holland had never heard him scream before. “It’s something else, it isn’t her!”

               Holland didn’t hear much else after that, because he and Alex were too far up the stairs by then. After they made it to the second floor, he swept Alex up in his arms so that they might ascend more quietly, as by now he knew where to step to stop the wood from creaking. Though Alex let out a soft gasp of surprise at this, and Holland was still recovering from his weeks of starvation at the Red London palace, ultimately this worked well enough, and they tumbled onto Holland’s bed, the door locked behind them, in a panting-but-safe heap. Holland heard a door slam downstairs, and though he didn’t, he knew if he had gazed out his bedroom window, he would have seen the two unfamiliar boys and the elderly woman fleeing out into the snow. He prayed that they didn’t encounter Stella on the streets.

               “You,” Alex marveled, after they had caught their breaths, “seem to attract danger. The night we’ve had!”

               Holland felt awkward and a bit nervous to be sitting so close with him in the dark. The memory of Athos’s knives and Astrid’s hands was not at the forefront of his mind, but it was certainly lurking in the underbrush, waiting on a trigger to pounce.

               “I’m sorry,” he said. What had just happened? What was Ned doing to these people? It seemed that the woman had not wept from physical pain, but from _emotional_ pain. Why were so many families willingly seeking out this experience?

               “Don’t be. I’ve been lacking in inspiration as of late anyway. What do you think all that was, down there?”

               Holland was afraid to look at him, but simultaneously terrified _not_ to know the precise location of his body in the room, the arrangement of all of his limbs. He told Alex that he didn’t know.

               “It looked like a séance for poor miss Charity, is what it looked like,” Alex said. “Ned always did have a penchant for spiritualism, but he never took it this far while we were involved.” Suddenly, he spun to look at Holland. “Are the two of you…?”

               Holland blushed. “Sanct, no.”

               Alex grinned. “Thought not. Otherwise, I’d have been out the front door with Stella.”

               Oh, Sanct, this was not good. Holland simply hadn’t been able to grab Stella in time! If he had, she would be up here with them right now! Perhaps he should have explained this to Alex to clear the air, but it was nearly impossible to hear himself think over the memory of Athos and Astrid’s laughter.

               “What’s a séance?” he asked, to buy himself time to think.

               “It’s nonsense, is what it is,” Alex said, bobbing a brow. “Ned always hated when I pointed that out, though. He wanted so badly to believe that the dead could be summoned. That’s what a séance is for.”

               “What hardship has he encountered to make him need such a thing?” Holland blurted without thinking. His heart was pounding, everything catching flame at once. It was unfair to Ned, but he didn’t care. In his experience, Ned liked the feeling of power for power, and Holland knew where that led. Imagine if _he’d_ had the luxury of sitting around tables and lighting candles in an attempt to bring back his brother. His parents. The someday king. Himself.

               To his surprise, Alex laughed softly at his outburst.

               “Moreover, what hardship has he experienced to justify making a living off others’ grief?” He crossed his arms, and then said, “You’re very perceptive, Green Gentleman.”

               Holland could have cried. Alex was beautiful, and kind, and he would have loved to spend the night with him. And yet, he’d been so warped by his years of suffering that he could no longer enjoy things like that. Athos and Astrid had ruined him.

               “Are you alright? Holland?”

               Alex took a step closer to him, and when he put a hand on Holland’s arm, Holland flinched away violently.

               Alex stepped backwards, wounded. “…Have I misunderstood?”

               Holland choked back a sob, did his best to put his feelings away behind lock and chain, but before he knew it, tears were falling down his face and onto the bedspread.

               “Holland—!”

               “I was a slave!” Holland’s voice was hoarse, barely audible. “I was a slave and they broke me.”

               Alex froze, and Holland continued to sob, desperate for touch and terrified of it.

               “Whatever do you mean?” Alex asked.

               “I mean I’ve never been free before coming to London!” Holland cried. “You haven’t read me wrong. _I_ am wrong. I have never owned my own body before and I’m disgusted that now I have freedom and I can’t function within it.”

               Holland sniffed, humiliated and ashamed and more than anything _furious_ that this had been done to him.

               “I want you here,” Holland continued. “But whenever people touch…it all comes back.”

               After several seconds, Alex sat down next to him cautiously, the mattress slightly shifting under his weight. Holland’s heart was throwing itself against the inside of his ribcage.

               “I don’t want to ask,” he said in the darkness. “For fear of insulting my friend behind his back, but I must. Ned is paying you to…?”

               “I’m his tutor. It’s nothing like that.”

               “Paid?”

               “Yes.”

               “Good.”

               They sat in silence a moment. Holland debated how he could tell Alex to leave. He ought to be alone. It was all he was good for anymore. Loneliness and death.

               “Are you from America? You look Caucasian to me.”

               “I don’t know what either of those things are.” Holland didn’t bother skirting around it. There really was no point pretending he was normal.

               Alex blinked, taking this in. Holland expected to hear him say something about truly being from afar, or something like what everyone else said, but he didn’t. In fact, from the look on his face, it seemed he had reached a completely different and sobering conclusion.

               “I’ve never known a slave before,” he said quietly. “I knew it was one of the lowest forms of degradation a human being could be subjected to, but to not even know what Christmas is…” His voice cracked, and Holland, horrified, put a shaky hand on his shoulder. “No, no,” Alex waved him off. “I should be comforting you.” His dark eyes were shining with tears. “Is there some way I might do that?”

               Holland thought. It would be a little bit of a relief if he left, but he knew as soon as the door (or window) shut he would feel much worse. As terrifying as it was, he wanted Alex to stay.

               “You could read me poetry,” he said softly.

               Alex appeared surprised by this. “Do you have poetry?”

               Holland directed him to the dresser, where all of his linens and toiletries had been stored, and after a few minutes of rummaging, Alex had managed to turn up three books: The Bible, Jane Eyre, and On the Origin of Species. None of these, it turned out, were poetry. However, instead of returning empty-handed, Alex removed a pencil and paper from one of the drawers and brought it back to the bed with the Bible. Holland watched him lie down, propped up on pillows stacked against the backboard.

               “Perhaps we can write some of our own,” he said.

               Holland watched him compose for a time from his perch on the side of the bed, but the snow piling against the window made him no less aware of how dreadfully cold the room was becoming. So, cautiously, he began to move closer to Alex, his heart beating so hard it felt it was in his throat.

               The scratching of the pencil stopped, and Alex looked at him.

               “You don’t have to—”

               “Please keep working,” Holland asked.

               And he did. And slowly, gingerly, Holland lay down at Alex’s side. He smelled of smoke and of the pie they’d shared at the bar, and his hair was still a bit damp from the snow. Initially, Alex tried to put an arm around him, but it made the memories just a bit too strong, and so he retracted it, and Holland tried to ignore the hurt in his eyes, the harsh truth that people who hadn’t gone through it would never understand. He thought of Vada, and missed her.

               While the snow fell, Holland did his best to focus on the scratching of Alexander’s pencil and the words he murmured about trees and bleeding hearts and ravens over the memories of the Dane twins’ laughter, and tonight, that was enough. Maybe someday he would trust Alex with the whole truth. Maybe someday, the scars would close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone. I know it's been a while. Basically I got hospitalized for mental health stuff. Things are really hard right now. If anyone's reading this, please know I appreciate your readership. Coping is...really really hard right now.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for mention of rape

               “Yes, look there! See, I did move it!”

               It was easier than usual for Holland to resist the urge to heave a sigh at Ned Tuttle’s frantic pointing, though he faced more difficulty stifling a cough. Tuttle was burning a pungent incense that was making the both of them pause the lesson every ten minutes to share in sneezing fits, and its smoke mingled with that of the sage he had burned earlier, along with that given off by the dozens of candleflames waving lazily around the room. It all left Holland feeling he was floating in a grey dream, and his mind kept sneaking off to get fresh air, returning to the poem Alex had left on his pillow a week ago.

               It had been titled “Please Write,” in the poet’s lopsided script, and had read:

“O’er sea, sky, hill and sand,

You came to London grey,

Without greed, green gentleman,

I fear you will not stay.

 

None can live without a bit,

Bare wallets don’t buy bread,

But if you read this note I pen,

Know work is in your head.

 

Your hair is sands of Egypt,

Your eyes green as your coat,

Your back is scarred by whippings,

Their tales stick in your throat.

 

I pray we meet again someday,

Perhaps someday soon.

Merry Christmas, my green stranger,

Remember you’re still new.

 

               Holland hadn’t intended to, but he’d accidentally memorized the entire thing. He still wasn’t certain just what he thought of Alex, and he very well knew he would never be any kind of writer, as much as Alex seemed to want him to be. Holland wondered what would happen when he finally became disappointed they would not be companions in poetry. His experience told him it would end in ruin. And really, he had known from the start that he would be hurt by this eventually. People never expressed kindness, at least not to him, if there wasn’t a catch to it. For Ned it was magic. For Alex it was writing. Unconditional love was as much a fairytale as Ned’s hopes of becoming a magician.

               “You aren’t looking!”

               Holland did his best to look intimidating as he rolled his head over to “look” at whatever Ned thought he was procuring. Being alone with Alex had been the only good thing to come of their sneaking into the house with Stella. Since the interrupted séance, Ned had practically become convinced he was the Someday King. Or “Jesus.” Whatever people called it here.

               “I’m not looking, because I know there’s nothing to see,” Holland deadpanned, watching Ned’s face light up like a red apple.

               “I created that divot in the sand!”

               Holland allowed himself to sigh this time. It was too damn hot in here. “That was there before we started.” He moved to open the window, and when Ned protested, snapped, “Oh, please. Lighting candles and burning herbs doesn’t produce magic, only shadows to delude yourself with.”

               He slid the window open and breathed the cold air gratefully. It wasn’t exactly fresh, because this London was utterly filthy, even in this neighborhood, but it was better than the oven Ned had turned his study into. When Holland turned around, he was gaping like a fish.

               “You—I—I summoned a full-body apparition just a week ago!”

               Holland knew he was referring to the séance, but he wasn’t supposed to know about those, so he only replied, “And how many times have you managed to do it since then?”

               Ned straightened up, possibly in an attempt to look intimidating. Holland was surprised at himself for not buying into it, and it occurred to him, as Ned procured a piece of white chalk and began to draw a ridiculous oval on the floor, that he was feeling a little less like a victim. Now that was a new sensation.

               “Ned.”

               The man continued frantically chalking symbols around the circle’s perimeter, his ass sticking in the air, at times waving dangerously close to a few of the lower candles. Holland watched him go about this for a few minutes too long, as right before he completed his circumnavigation, he finally moved a bit too close to a flame, the sudden heat causing him to jump back and send the entire candelabra clattering to the floor. The breeze from the window caused the flames to leap easily from their wicks to the hardwood, and Holland hurried to stamp them out, covering the bottoms of his shoes with melted wax. After it was over, he looked up at Ned with wordless fury.

               Ned didn’t look surprised when he saw that Holland was angry, and perhaps this was what angered Holland the most, more even than when he said, “Well, don’t look at me.”

               Holland could have throttled him. “These are my only shoes!”

               “Yes, the ones I bought you.”

               Holland flushed with shame before remembering, “Yes, as a part of my _wages_. You know, those things you’ve been neglecting to give me.”

               “No one told you to stomp it out like that.”

               “Oh, and I suppose you were going to move that water from that box and extinguish it yourself, magician?”

               “Why the hell don’t you do it? After all, you’re supposed to be teaching me!”

               Holland felt as though he’d been plunged into icy water. _Sanct._

               Unfortunately, the room was clear of smoke now, and Ned could see the change in Holland’s expression crystal clear. And, though he was stupid enough to believe he could ever perform magic, he was not so stupid as to miss its implications.

               “Come to think of it,” Ned said, after a beat of silence, “you haven’t done any magic since we’ve begun.”

               Sanct, sanct, sanct. Holland would have to think fast. He wouldn’t survive if he was kicked out, wouldn’t ever see Maurine or Vada or Alex again. He had no skills to offer this world, nothing but the basest labor his tired body could perform. Why had he ever opened his mouth? Why couldn’t he just have tolerated this man’s self-delusion? Why was he defending the sanctity of magic, when it had only ever hurt him?

               An idea occurred to Holland.

               “Haven’t I?” His voice was steady, confident, perfect. All assurance washed away from Ned’s face.

               “What do you mean?”

               “I mean,” Holland said, forcing a bit of residual anger into his voice, “when did the apparition occur, and what did it look like?”

               Ned told him, and Holland walked over to the window and closed it.

               “Talya.”

               “What?”

               “Her name is Talya.”

               “What is sh—”

               “I loved her.” Holland interrupted him. “She’s dead now. I was homesick, and I lost control of her spirit. I heard some yelling that night after she escaped.”

               Ned looked close to tears. “Why would you let me believe I did it?”

               “You’ve made zero progress since we’ve begun. I didn’t want it to reflect poorly on my teaching abilities.” The lie was bitter on Holland’s tongue, but it was one that needed to be said.

               Ned nodded to himself, and a few tears rolled down his cheeks. “Wouldn’t want it to affect your wages, now would we?” He pointed to the waxy mess on the floor. “You just wanted me to buy you a new pair of shoes.”

               Holland found the idea that he was using Ned for his money, that he was collecting possessions and shoes like some kind of spoiled palace prince, so laughable that he actually cracked a smile.

               The remorse which overtook Ned’s features was so poignant just then that Holland discerned it simply had to be fake.

               “Holland,” he said, “I thought we were like family.”

               And he stepped out of the room, leaving Holland under the watchful, flaming eyes of the remaining lit candles, feeling the most mysterious sensation of guilt.

***

               Christmas was a taut affair. Despite the arguments over money which Holland now regularly heard through the walls, Ned was planning on hosting a party for the event, which made Holland’s wages, now appearing in crisp envelopes on his bed at the end of every week, even heavier in his pocket. Mere days after their argument, a new pair of shoes had appeared there as well, and as such, Holland had asserted to all members of the household he was currently on polite speaking terms with (Maurine), that he understood gifts were custom at Christmas Eve, and he really would prefer not to receive anything. It wasn’t that he really expected to receive anything from Ned or Vada, but on the off-chance he did, he knew it would make their silence feel that much worse. He trusted she would spread the word.

               It occurred to Holland sometime in the frenzy of rolling pie crusts, erecting a tree in the sitting room, and polishing silverware that he had never been to a party before. Once the thought had hit him, no attempts to distract himself through extra chores would chase it away. He’d never even been forced to _serve_ at a party, while he’d been a slave, though he supposed this was little surprise, as Osaron wasn’t the kind of king to invite other rulers over for drinks, and Holland’s body had been so destroyed during his time with the Danes that simply standing had been difficult, let alone walking around with a tray of drinks.

               Though the feeling had disappeared for a while since Alex’s visit, it began to surface once more in Holland’s mind that he was an outlier from these people, and did not belong in their celebrations. Why else would the idea of a party make him so uncomfortable? In the days leading up to Christmas, he became hyper aware of his past hurts, the word “slave” repeating itself in his mind on endless loop, louder and louder until he managed to get to sleep for the day. He did enjoy being around Maurine for the preparations, and sometimes, he forgot he was damaged when he threw a bit of flour at her, making her curse as Holland had found out women in Grey London definitely didn’t do, but these moments were few and far between. For the most part, Holland dwelled on all of the worst traumas he had ever suffered and wondered how he could even have a hope at feeling normal within such a healthy, happy gathering.

               The day of the party dawned grey and rainy, not that Holland saw much of it, but he could feel the humidity in the air lingering in the house as he worked in frantic silence with Maurine, Vada, and even Ned to get everything in order before guests began arriving. He did not miss that he was asked to assemble the sandwiches while the other three arranged the dining room into a suitable place for refreshment to be had.

               Holland was shocked when he emerged from the kitchen. The dining room looked almost cheerful. Its thick layer of dust was gone, and there were merry little candles in red and green, along with sprigs of evergreen, decorating everywhere that wasn’t reserved for food. While Ned left to preen himself, Holland and Maurine worked together to set all the food out, great platters of ham and mince pies and mashed potatoes. He nearly dropped a bowl of beans when she suddenly exclaimed:

               “Oh, for God’s sake Holland, they’ll be here any minute!”

               He stared at her in silent confusion until he followed her gaze down to the table placings and, after doing a bit of mental math, realized in addition to their guests, there would only be room for two more people. Two more people, and one of them was upstairs getting cleaned up. His stomach plummeted.

               “I can’t,” Holland said, horrified.

               “Yes, you can,” Maurine said, with a patience that only made him angrier at Ned. _Sanct_ , and this was a man who had ordered Holland, upon arrival, to treat the servants like equals! The man wasn’t only delusional, but a hypocrite! When he attempted to protest, she cut him off. “Go get tidied up. This is my job.”

               Holland obeyed, but his guilt hung over him like a London fog, which would not dissipate until after dinner. It had begun to snow shortly before guests began arriving, and Vada was overwhelmed taking soggy coats and dripping boots off their ungrateful backs. When Holland moved to help her, the odd looks he received from some of the guests did not compare to the scathing glare she sent his way.

               The food was delicious as usual, but Holland had little appetite knowing that Maurine and Vada would be receiving only the scraps of their hard work. He almost got up and abandoned the entire party when Vada showed up to refill his glass of wine, but the pristine postures of those around him kept him in his seat, which only made him feel sicker. His state was not helped by the number of candles Ned, no doubt, had placed around the room, which added to the claustrophobic heat. To add to the misery further, everyone seemed utterly fascinated by Holland and his history, along with his expertise in what they called the “occult.” He ventured from their questions that every one of them was just as much a primping baby tyrant as Ned, the only two at the table who had some amount of mercy for him were Stella, who sat across from him, and Alex, who looked like he wasn’t sure how he’d landed there. He spoke little throughout the night, but offered Holland sympathetic glances from across the table which were as reviving as cold, crisp water in this desert of social graces and servitude. The only words he actually spoke at the table were to compliment Ned on the dining room’s cleanliness, which, Holland thought with ire, was probably mostly Vada and Maurine’s work, anyway.

               The meal ended, and Holland lingered while everyone else migrated to the sitting room and elsewhere on the first floor. Everyone, that is, except Alex, who waved Stella on, and then gave Holland an inquisitive look.

               “You,” he said, “are full of surprises.” Shaking his head, he took out another of the foul-smelling, paper-wrapped sticks he’d used the night they’d spent together and lit it aflame. “Master magician…no wonder Ned likes you.”

               Holland’s mood brightened just a little bit at the thought that Alex shared his distaste for Ned’s magic-obsession. He stood from the table and took the stick from Alex’s hands, examining it. Little cinders fell to the floor, and he watched them sputter and die.

               “What is this?”

               “A cigarette.” Alex’s breath was hot and smoky. “Try it.”

               Holland did, and the smoke was so hot and dry in his lungs that he nearly coughed one up immediately after. Alex thumped him on the back with one hand and retrieved his cigarette with the other.

               “Not for everyone,” he said.

               “Stella was right,” Holland said, his chest tight. “That _is_ disgusting.”

               “Terribly addictive, too,” Alex said. “I would say you’re far too rational a man to ever start the habit, but now that I know you practice magic, I’m not so certain.”

                When Holland looked at him, his face was full of an almost condescending bemusement. It was a bitter contrast to the expression he’d worn the day Holland had saved him from the carriage.

                “You don’t believe in it.” Holland thought of Maurine.

               Alex smirked. “Afraid not. I don’t believe in anything I can’t see.”

               “But you’re here, at the celebration of the Somed—of Jesus.”

               “Ha!” Alex laughed. “I’ll show up to anyone’s celebration if they’ll feed and wine me.” He blew out a cloud of smoke. “Even if it’s Ned’s.”

               This time, Holland shared his smile. “You don’t like him.”

               “We have a history.”

               “I guessed that. Does he not sense your dislike?”

               “Ned senses everyone’s dislike, he’s just desperate to prove them wrong,” Alex said, his eyes traveling across the room to Stella, who was cozied up in a corner with Maurine. “Stella’s original plus one was struck with fever, so I was the last-minute switch. Ned would never willingly invite me back to this place, he can’t stand hearing anyone poke holes in his magical fantasy.”

               Holland could have kissed him. How wonderful it was, to be able to share his hate with someone.

               “He’s obsessed with it,” he said, eliciting a nod from Alex.

               “Utterly.”

               Holland waited for him to say more, but he only received a sly glance.

               “What?”

               “Well, you believe in it.”

               Holland had no choice but to tell him he did, in case word somehow got back to Ned.

               “It’s different for you, though,” Alex said. “You’ve been through things, you need belief. Ned lives lavishly and still clings to the idea that he might obtain more prestige through magic.”

               “And when that isn’t enough,” Holland continued, thinking of what Alex had told him about the séances, “he uses the illusion of it to take advantage of people and achieve the same end.”

               “Yes, precisely.” Though there was agreement in Alex’s voice, something appeared to be troubling him. Holland suddenly felt the same mysterious sensation of guilt from earlier, when Ned had told him he was ‘like family.’

               Pah.

               “I liked your poem,” Holland said. “Especially the line about greed.”

               Alex chuckled. “I’m a poet. Greed is one of the few vices I don’t have the luxury of partaking in.”

               Holland recalled him, soaking wet and selling his work for pennies on the street, and believed that.

               “Then why are you recommending I join you in poverty?”

               “Do I look impoverished to you? I get by. Besides, if things get really bad, you could always conjure us up some money, no?”

               “I wish magic worked like that.”

               “I don’t,” Alex’s lip curled slightly. “There would never be a writer among us again. Think of it. If you could summon anything with a flick of a finger, who would ever subject themselves to the grueling labor of composition again?”

               “No one.”

               “Exactly! Have you ever seen a sloth make art? There are some things, good things, which only come with time and work. There are no shortcuts that don’t involve some kind of evil or another.”

               Holland wondered if it might be to Alex’s benefit to try taking a shortcut. Hard work and time appeared to have left both of them in unfavorable financial situations. However, he did not voice this, and instead finished their conversation on the tentative promise to consider writing and do his best not to magic the house on fire, though Holland believed Alex, in the short span of time they had talked, had created far more smoke in the house than Holland ever would, including when he’d set the floor on fire earlier that week. It hurt to watch him go, and suddenly all the voices in the house seemed a lot noisier, mingling together in a great, throbbing cacophony. Holland clung to the “merry Christmas” Alex had excused himself with like a talisman.

               The people here were different from those Holland saw on the street, on his occasional errands. Their women walked alone. Their men were cleaner shaven, more elaborately dressed. And yet, as different as they prided themselves on being, as tolerant as they claimed to be, they still were perfectly fine being served on platters by people who had less than them. They still were fine with having servants. Why? Maurine was now kissing Stella, but was it as an equal? Alex seemed to disapprove of taking advantage of people when it was through seances, but he’d had no problem with being served by Vada. Why did no one care that there was an entire class of people destined to break their backs so another could live in excess?

               Holland was suddenly weary of it all. He slipped up the first flight of stairs silently, and was about to climb the second up when a sudden gust of cold air captured his attention. He looked up to see the shadow of a slim form sitting by an open window, eating something handheld by light of a single candle. The flame flickered in the wind, and Holland was struck to see that the woman was Vada, her eyes dark and pensive as the London soot.

               He froze, uncertain what to do, and only panicked further when, after he’d stood there for far too long, she looked up at him and jumped. She started to stand.

               “Don’t!” Holland said, far too loud, and then, correcting his volume, repeated, “Don’t.”

               Slowly, she sat down again. He found it incredibly difficult to look at her.

               “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said, looking at the abandoned mince pie in her hand with regret. “I should go.”

               She said nothing, and he didn’t move. This elicited a bitter laugh from her.

               “You wanted me to call you back.”

               Hot shame rushed to Holland’s face, and he realized there really was no hiding from her. He took the chair opposite hers, shivering when the wind blew inside and scattered snowflakes on the rug at their feet. Pretending he didn’t feel George the Skeleton’s hollow gaze on his back, he swallowed his pride.

               “I shouldn’t have grabbed you.”

               She blinked at him.

               “I know how it feels to…be used violently by other people. I saw my own suffering in your scars. I used to be a slave, and I never knew another person who went through the same thing, so I didn’t know how to react. I was just so happy, that someone else might understand.”

               The silence that followed, her blank stare, was not at all what he’d anticipated. Even telling her about his enslavement was not cathartic, like it had been with Alex. Now it felt like begging, like asking for compensation. It sounded shallow from the moment it left his lips, and he could tell she heard it, too.

               “You’re happy,” she finally said, “that someone else understands?”

               Holland exhaled. “Yes.”

               He balked when she finished her mince pie, dusted the crumbs off her hands, stood, and chastised him with such fire in her eyes that it might have melted the snow on the windowsill.

               “Do you have any idea how selfish you sound? To be happy someone else can relate to the feeling of slavery?”

               Holland shrunk in her shadow, but bristled all the same. “I was a slave my entire life, and wanting someone else to understand me makes me selfish?”

               “Oh, grow up!” Vada exclaimed, and it hit him like a punch to the gut. “The world does not owe you anything for your suffering. You may find sympathy from others because of your oppression, but you won’t get it from me.”

               He was no less than affronted. Since he’d arrived in Gray London, everyone he’d told of his past had been nothing but sympathetic. He’d expected she of all people would understand.

               “But you deserve better, too!” He stood, thinking of how it had felt to have Alex hold him while he cried. “You deserve to be understood, too. Don’t you want to be?”

               “Holland,” she said, “I was a sex slave.”

               After the last two words were uttered, the only movement left in the room was that of the candle’s flame. Holland’s voice had left him, and he stood like one of the Danes’s garden statues while she went on.

               “My people, the Romani people, we are seen as subhuman in England. In most of Europe. I always traveled as a child, but now, I’m afraid whenever I go out, because I’m afraid of getting taken again.” She paused. “I was thirteen when my caravan was attacked.”

               Holland breathed. “I’m so—”

               “They took me to a dark place where I could never be fully dressed. Men were on me, day in and day out,” she was sobbing now, “I was hardly given anything to eat. My hair was falling out, I wanted to die, and I didn’t care if I went to Hell for it. I had several children,” her voice cracked on the word, “and I don’t know where they are now. No matter how thin I grew, I could not slip out of my chains. I was trapped there for years until my sores made me too repulsive to be held, and they threw me out to die. I was reading palms on the street for money when Ned found me. I could hardly speak, I was so parched. My wounds were festering, I’d hardly had a proper conversation for years, and I hadn’t the faintest bit of hope in humanity, in anyone. He took me in, under the premise I would teach him what I knew of the occult. He saved my life.”

               “Vada—”

               “Don’t!” she cut him off, sitting down again, her shoulders still heaving. “I’m not upset that you grabbed me, though I was terrified, just as I’m terrified to be in this room alone with you, with any man alone. I’m upset that it took you this long to talk to me about it, that you tiptoed around me in silence with the hope that _I_ would be the one apologizing to you, because oh, you’ve suffered enough, you shouldn’t have to be the one to reach out first.”

               Holland was speechless. He, too, sat.

               “And this,” she continued, “this is why I don’t like talking about it. No one owes you sympathy or healing. It hurts me to talk about my years in slavery. I cannot counsel you through recovering from your hardships when I hardly know how to recover from my own.”

               “Alright, you’re right. I’m sorry for expecting that from you.” He felt stupid saying it, and was surprised when she earnestly thanked him for doing so. A bit more confident, he clarified, “But I still think you deserve to experience good things, in the wake of your suffering.”

               “I don’t,” she said. “To make up for one day of what I went through, I should have spent a lifetime as a queen. But that clearly didn’t happen.”

               It was a grim truth she presented, but a truth nonetheless. “It didn’t really feel like a relief, to tell you.”

               “I always feel that way when I tell secrets,” said Vada. “There’s nothing delicious about it.”

               She shivered, and he, with a bit of force, shut the window.

               “I have to tell you something,” she said. Holland shook his head.

               “You’ve already told me enough for the night.” He wondered if alcohol was to blame.

               “The screaming at night,” she said, her dark eyes meeting his. “I don’t want you to worry. Ned…holds séances to make money. We’ve been short since Theo has—”

               She cut herself off, and Holland quickly reassured her that he knew about Theo.

               “Thank God,” she said. “Anyway, I know you work with real magic.”

               “Yes.”

               “And so you know that real magic can cause real pain.”

               Oh, he ached to tell her the truth then. But she had made it very clear she had enough pain. If they were to know each other, it would need to be in their shared recovery, rather than their shared misery.

               “Yes, magic can be painful.”

               “Well, the séances aren’t real.”

               He did his best to look like this was his first time receiving this information. Holland wondered how much of a secret the fraudulent seances were supposed to be, and then, with more than a bit of alarm, considered that it may be a problem that Alex knew about them.

               “Is the pain? Real?”

               “It’s nothing like what would come with dark magic.”

               “I see.”

               “I promise that Ned has potential as a magic-user, as an Antari. He may well be able to do what we fake in the séances someday.”

               “Just not yet.”

               “Not yet.”

               Holland sighed. “That does make me feel better, but why is Ned doing this of all things to make money?” Maybe he could get a justification to give Alex.

               “London isn’t good to men like Ned.”

               He snorted, but the look she gave him was sobering.

               “How do you mean?”

               “For a man to love another man is seen…as the greatest disgrace imaginable, in England. Ned is doing séances because he can’t find work anywhere else. And it isn’t as if his family will help him. He’s dead to them. Maurine is the same way. We are all outcasts in this house, and we have to help each other.”

               Holland’s throat had gone dry.

               “I had no idea.”

               “Well, now you do. Don’t tell them I told you any of this,” she said. “They will tell you when they’re ready. I had a feeling it would be safe, from how close I saw you to that man downstairs.”

               He stammered, “I—we—”

               “I just wanted you not to think the worst. And to let you know that others besides you have suffered.”

               “Thank you,” Holland said, not sure exactly what he was referring to, or how much he meant it.

               “You’re welcome.”

               There was nothing he could think of to say to that, and so the conversation died at their feet. His head was spinning with all the ways he’d thought and acted incorrectly, so much that the only thought which remained unscrambled was that of not allowing her to spend Christmas upstairs alone.

               He stood. “It’s too cold up here.”

               She looked up at him. “It’s too hot down there.”

               But she followed him downstairs, and the two of them wound up making their way to the desserts and partaking in jellies before migrating to watch a rambunctious game called ‘charades’ that was taking place in the sitting room. Eventually, the entire party was crammed in the room, and after a night of drinking, no less, but Holland, though he did not take part, felt a bit more at ease in the crowd of strangers than he had at the party’s start. Alex talked to everyone, but he came back to Holland, and Maurine accompanied him at the fringe of the game, and they sat on a table together, deflecting Ned’s admonition about the furniture with a simple “it’s Christmas!”

                Stella was in the middle of a rather botched job of acting out the word “glove” when there was a knock at the door.

               “Now, now, don’t fret.” Ned extracted himself from the chair he’d been sinking further and further into for the past hour, and swayed on his feet for a moment before carefully picking his way out of the sitting room and into the main hall. “Just a visit from old Jack Frost, I’ll wager. Yes, _I’m_ the host, I will answer.”

               The following exchange was heard by Holland, and everyone else who had not yet passed out drunk:

               _“Are you Edward Archibald Tuttle?”_

“Yes, I’m certain I am.”

               _“You are a companion of Theodore Berrycloth?”_

“He is a dear friend, yes. What’s this about?”

               _“I’m so sorry, Sir, but I’ve been sent to notify you of his death. He perished of a fever in India.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! It's been a while. Thanks so much for being patient with me. Hope you enjoyed the extra long chapter.


	11. Chapter 11

               Ned’s grief plunged the house into a heavy silence. It was as though the blanket of filthy snow and slush that covered Grey London was insulating it from sound. The closures of nearly every shop at the market for the holidays meant there were few pedestrians on the street, and what few there were walked alone and quickly, hunched against the wind and the calls of the most desperate of beggars, creating an eerie parallel to the London Holland had grown up in. Oddly enough, the fresh lack of screams at night left a void which made the house feel alien; Holland had made the mistake of venturing into the night to get a bit of air only once, and it had transported him into such a vivid flashback of the Danes’ London that he’d woken slumped against a wall and half frozen to death, with some kind of city officials attempting to pull him to his feet. Maurine had gone pale when they’d dragged him to the door, and as she’d given him a bowl of leftover stew to warm up, she’d muttered something along the lines of “that’s just what we need, the police at this house.”

               Holland began to grow rather restless after that excursion. New Year’s came and went, and the shops reopened, but the simple fact remained that he was running out of things to do. When he helped Maurine and Vada, the chores were finished early enough that they each ran off to their individual hobbies, and it was still too cold to risk venturing off to Stella and Alex’s university to visit them. Holland debated asking Maurine, whom he suspected was sneaking off in her free time to visit Stella, if she could bring him along sometime, but he wasn’t enthusiastic about the possibility of being alone with the two of them if he couldn’t find Alex, and besides, the longer Ned wallowed in his grief, the less Holland felt like flirting.

               His sobs, audible through the walls when Holland awoke in the middle of the night, were all Holland had heard from him since Christmas. Now, according to Maurine, a new year had begun, and Ned had spent all of it so far locked away in the dark, apparently oblivious to the house’s other three occupant’s increasing anxiety about finances. Holland noticed that by the day, an increasing percentage of their meals were made up of simple potatoes and cabbage. A few people from the party had stopped by to give them tea and biscuits to ease the stress of grief, but as the entire party had been made up of ladies and gentlemen of similar social standing to Ned—that is, social pariahs prone to loving the wrong gender—the gifts had been sparse and were worked through quickly. Holland, Vada, and Maurine now were working to stretch what little money they had left as far as it would go. For the first time since arriving at Ned Tuttle’s home, Holland went to bed with his stomach growling.

               A week after the new year began, it became frightfully cold outside, and the three of them, plus the closest thing to a ghost that had ever manifested within the house’s walls, woke to find they could see nothing but glowing white outside of the windows. Holland, and then Maurine, attempted to lift one, to no avail. It was only when Vada nearly broke her back on the front steps that they realized an ice storm of epic proportions had blown through overnight, coating everything in sparkling white and rendering the streets virtually impassable.

               That night, after a hearty supper of half a potato each, Holland marched up to Ned’s room. Perhaps if Vada and Maurine, his lifelong friends, could not get through to him, an (allegedly) all-powerful Antari with skills he wanted could.

               Unfortunately, while this would have been perfectly in line with Ned’s personality, Holland received nothing but silence when he knocked on the door that night, and returned to Maurine and Vada, who were shivering together in an armchair by a pathetically weak fire, defeated.

               He took the chair opposite them, willing his stomach not to growl. He’d been hungry before, he could be hungry again. It was just that he’d gotten so used to taking care of himself. Holland realized, with a pang, that he had actually begun to enjoy food again, though it wasn’t only his own hunger he wanted to ease. In spite of everything Vada had argued, he still believed all three of them deserved to have a bit of comfort after the hardships they’d been through. He wanted to do something about their drawn faces, though he knew the three of them were sitting in silence for a reason. Extra séances were out of the question, no one, not even someone grieving as hard as Ned, would venture out in these conditions to speak to the dead. Plus, it wasn’t as though he could suggest it in front of Maurine, who still didn’t know he knew the truth. It made no sense to ask more labor of her or Vada, and yet, what skills did he have to offer the workforce? If he wasn’t going to freeze his fingers off doing labor outdoors, he would need warmer clothing that they neither had the money to purchase nor the materials to sew.

               It was when Holland thought of Alex, harking his poems on the streets for Christmas money, that he decided to venture out again. He was doing the least in the house currently, so it only made sense that he would be the one to go for help. He hadn’t touched a pen or pencil since Christmas, and knew full well there wouldn’t be enough people on the streets to sell anything substantial, even if he _had_ the skills to write like Alex did, but perhaps there was someone out there who knew Alex, and then he could help them.

               Holland chose a sunny yet arctic day, and was shivering within minutes of his departure. The sunlight was so blinding on the snow-covered streets that he had difficulty reading street signs on the way to the White Owl.

               When he swung through the doors, it took his eyes a moment to adjust. Once green had faded back to black, it still didn’t even look like the same bar he’d visited with Stella and Alex before Christmas. He’d hardly been able to breathe, so thick had been the vivacious and merry crowd—now, there were more chairs empty than full, and the few patrons present were silent.

               Holland cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said, “does anyone here know where I might find a Mr. Alexander Benton?”

               There was no response. In fact, hardly anyone even looked up from their drinks.

               “Anyone?” Holland did his best not to let his irritation come through in his voice. He wouldn’t be happy if he’d trudged through the freeze for nothing. “Alexander Benton, student of poetry?”

               On this last word, a gentleman with a long face and thick, dark hair glanced up. The gesture appeared nearly involuntary, so quickly did he turn back to the two hunched companions he was conversing quietly with. Holland approached them.

               “Excuse me.”

               The man with the long face looked up at him. “ _Oui?”_

               Holland’s heart sank. He was speaking an unfamiliar tongue. Still, he gave it one last shot.

               “You looked up when I said ‘poetry.’ I was wondering if you knew whom I was talking about, and where to find him.”

               The man remarked something apparently funny to his friends that Holland still couldn’t understand. Holland was about to turn around and leave when the man said, “Seems a bit of a leap in logic.”

               Holland balked. “So you can speak.”

               “Je peux parler plusieurs langues.”

               Two could play at this game.

               “Ös kijn avost?” Holland sneered, not holding back his accent.

               The man blinked at him, and after a moment of watching Holland seethe, said, “Usually people walk away by now.”

               “I wonder why.”

               “Probably because they’re capable of picking up on social cues indicating when their presence is not welcome.”

               Holland was ready to knock his teeth in. “Look, are you going to help me or not? Alexander Benton is a friend of a friend of mine, Ned Tuttle. He’s feeling extremely poorly and I thought Alex might know how to help.”

               “Did you say Ned Tuttle? As in Edward Archibald Tuttle?” The expressions of the man and his companions had changed considerably.

               “ _Yes.”_

               “Why didn’t you just say so? No, don’t answer that.” He held out a hand. “I’m Oscar. Oscar Wilde.”

               Holland stared at his hand with narrowed eyes, until Oscar rolled his.

               “Oh, I’m sorry for giving you a hard time. I’ve never seen you at the White Owl before. I’d thought you might be police.”

               Holland’s stomach dropped. “You’d thought I was looking to arrest Alex?”

               “It’s not an entirely unwarranted (if you’ll excuse the pun) assumption, given the day and age we’re living in. What’s wrong with Mr. Tuttle?”

               The thought of police coming after Alex had set Holland on edge. “First, do you know Alex?”

               “I’ve heard the name before. Had no clue he wrote _poetry,_ though.” There was a hint of condescension in the way he said it.

               “Do you write poetry?”

               “I live poetry.”

               Holland resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

               “I suppose you wouldn’t know where he studies, then.”

               Wilde’s eyes glittered like the ice outside. “No, I wouldn’t. That does seem an odd piece of information to keep from one’s friends, though.”

               It was. That Alex had told him he was studying poetry without telling him precisely where implied a need to be seen as intellectual without being seen as a person. It allowed for Holland to admire him without any intention of long-term intimacy. But then again, they’d shared a bed, and Alex hadn’t tried to kill him, so it was probable he did care. This stranger had no idea what he was talking about.

               Still, Holland couldn’t avoid the feeling that Wilde had pointed out a truth he couldn’t un-know.

               “So you know Ned.”

               Wilde nodded, and muttered something in the other tongue to his friends, who moved to another table. He motioned for Holland to sit. “He’s a strange man. Likes to play with ghosts. What’s wrong with him?”

               Holland told him, and Wilde shook his head.

               “Dreadful. Tell him I’m sorry, will you?”

               “Do you know how to help him? Maybe if you told him yourself—”

               “That won’t happen,” Wilde said. “It’s too dangerous for me to be coming over there now. Why doesn’t he talk to Theodore like any other ghost?”

               Because Ned didn’t, and never would, possess the ability to magically summon ghosts. That fact was likely more obvious now than ever. In fact, it was likely he was mourning both Theo and his magical abilities as they spoke. But Holland didn’t have the heart to tell this to Wilde.

               “You’re right.” As he said it, he knew it was true. The fastest way to get Ned to feel better, and to get food in their stomachs again, would be to reinforce his delusions of magical power. “I’ll go talk to him now.”

               “I wish you luck. By the way, what language was that you spoke earlier?”

               “Maktahn,” Holland answered honestly.

               “Is it Scandinavian?”

               Holland said it was.

               “Ah, interesting. I haven’t heard of it, but it had that harshness. It was a pleasure…”

               “Holland. Holland Vosjik.”

               “Holland.” This time, there was nothing of his initial caustic amusement in Wilde’s smile. “Pleasure, and happy new year.”

               In spite of the benevolent end to their conversation, Holland was feeling more, not less, grumpy by the time he left. This was in part because he’d been hoping to see Alex, or at least have a hope of seeing him soon, and in part because he wasn’t enthusiastic about having to deepen his lies to Ned about his magical abilities. Not only would the process be irritating, but Ned had also said that he thought of Holland as family, and it felt…oddly wrong to take advantage of that, as much as Ned deserved it.

               Holland felt something was wrong before he’d so much as opened the door, but he attributed his malaise to the rapidly darkening sky. The blizzard began when he was just two blocks from home, the first rush of snowflakes coming in a great gust of wind so cold it forced his eyes shut, and by the time he tiptoed up the iced front steps, his hands were shaking so violently he could hardly get the key in the lock.

               Shadows from the wall lamps danced all the way to the dining room, which was still uncharacteristically clean. He strained his ears, but the only sound was that of the wind outside; it gave the impression that the paintings were holding their breath for something.

               The kitchen was empty, as was the sitting room, which he doubled back to check, after a careful knock on the door. Could it be that Vada and Maurine were out in the storm? Sanct, what if they’d gone out to look for work, and had gotten caught out when the blinding snow had come in? He might have walked right past them, and wouldn’t have known it!

               Holland’s heart was truly pounding by the time he reached the second floor. George seemed to judge him as he gingerly opened Maurine, then Vada’s doors, to find their chambers empty. He was sorely tempted to linger in the latter, to peruse her books and touch her clothes and feel her sheets, all of which was saturated with years’ worth of cinnamon and amber incense, but the though of her walking in and finding him having betrayed her trust was so utterly gutting that he practically slammed the door behind him, dashing to the staircase once again.

               When he emerged onto the third floor, he was faced so immediately with the very person he had just feared encountering that he almost fell backwards. Vada was standing next to Maurine, the both of them staring into Ned’s chamber. Its door was wide open.

               “Thank God,” Holland said, surprising himself by using the Grey-London slang.

               If he’d been concerned he would startle them by appearing so suddenly, he was even more alarmed when they didn’t react. Vada shook her head, the words leaving her a peep louder than a mouse’s breath.

               “He’s gone.”

               Holland’s blood ran cold.

               “Who?” He asked, though he already knew.

               Maurine turned around to look at him, her face haggard. A tear ran down her cheek, attaching itself to her scar and following it down.

               “I came up to check on him, and found the door open like this.” She took a shaky breath. “I’m afraid he’s run out into the snow to…”

               “To what?” Holland demanded, somewhat impatiently, when she didn’t finish.

               Maurine seemed to collapse in on herself. She covered her face just before it happened, and Vada wrapped her arms around her. Holland felt stupid, just standing there, and he felt a shock of rage at Ned for making them feel this way. Imagine if _he_ had reacted like Ned whenever he’d lost someone. Why, he’d have ended up like Osaron, a void of chaos and evil, if he’d thrown himself into these kinds of episodes.

               “He hasn’t been eating,” Vada said. “I worry he…went to be with Theodore.”

               _“What?”_ There were two possibilities this kind of an assumption raised: either Holland gravely misunderstood the kind of man Ned Tuttle was, or Vada did. And while it would seem obvious that the one who’d known him longer was the better judge of his character, Holland’s earlier conversation at the White Owl had seemingly confirmed his own calculations to be correct, and sometimes, it was not those closest to a person who saw them the most clearly. Vada cared about Ned too much to understand that he was much too conceited a man to end his life.

               “We think,” Maurine said, “we think he may have decided to end it.”

               “Oh, stop!” Holland sneered, pulling her out of Vada’s arms. “He hasn’t taken his life. Sanct, it’s like you don’t know him at all.”

               “And you do?” A bit of the misery in her voice abated to make way for defiance. This put Holland more at ease. “You’ve been here for scarcely a month. I’ve known him for—”

               “Yes, you have known him longer,” Holland said. “But you’re biased in his favor because of that. You assume that it’s been selfless misery that has kept him locked up all this time, that he would never leave without telling you, for fear you would worry.” He met Vada’s eyes. “But misery can sometimes be selfish.”

               Vada’s face became pensive as she appraised this, but Maurine remained unconvinced.

               “Holland, he’s lost his l—best friend. Theodore was everything to him. He’s been getting through the days on the anticipation of his return, and now…”

               Holland frowned. It was true that Ned and Theodore appeared to be very close. Their letters had held an intimacy he’d never glimpsed, not even with Talya. There was a lack of pragmaticism, a lack of function in their apparent love that perplexed him slightly. A person would have to be mad with desire to keep touch with a person after they’d left (he knew not precisely where ‘India’ was, but gathered from the way others spoke of it that it was far away geographically).

               Still, Holland had only begun to think of taking his life after a lifetime of slavery. Vada was still here, and she’d suffered forced births, and the subsequent abduction of her children, isolation from her family, a lifetime of degradation in an invasive kind of slavery which Holland assumed felt quite similar to the complete loss of bodily autonomy that he’d experienced when possessed. Both of them had lost _everyone_ , including themselves…so was Ned _truly_ so sheltered that losing _one_ loved one was enough to push him over the edge?

               The more he considered it, the more plausible it seemed. Maybe Vada and Maurine actually understood Ned’s self-absorption more than he’d thought. If Ned had already been upset that his magic wasn’t coming through, that his lifetime pursuit was proving fruitless, it made sense that the loss of his other great love would make life seem empty.

               Just as Holland was truly starting to believe that they were right to be concerned, however, a knock sounded at the windowpane which caused all three of them to jump out of their skins.

               Absurdly, Holland’s first thought was that, real or fake, they were in the presence of some sort of a ghost. It was impossible to see anything outside of the window, as the only parts of the glass which weren’t black with night were covered in ice from the storm outside. After turning to each other in horror, Maurine and Vada exchanged looks with him, and all three of them moved forward to lift the sill. Another knock sounded while they were struggling with the frozen lock, and when it finally gave, the open window birthed a person headfirst onto the carpet in a spill of snow, falling directly on top of Vada.

               Maurine was the first to arise, followed by Holland, who helped her force the window shut. Once they were once again sealed away from the storm, they were left in a ringing silence, which Vada, scrambling to her feet, proceeded to shatter.

               _“Ned?”_

              

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I butchered the Maktahn, but I tried to piece together bits of it from the books to form the phrase, "You fear death?" Basically, Holland was threatening Wilde.
> 
> Leave me a comment if you're enjoying the frequent updates :) I'll try to keep em up.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to follow my other writerly activities (or rant to me about my son Holland), come find me on other social media!  
> Tumblr: fernspell.tumblr.com  
> Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/36110744-lara


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